No. AUSMAIN-023
Arrernte tywerrenge of the Pultara class
Australia · Charlotte Waters telegraph station, southern Northern Territory near the South Australian border; Lower · Southern Arrernte (Arandic) country
Restricted
tywerrenge
Source term: bullroarer
sacred/secret object — the class term for stone and wooden churinga, including the bullroarer
Etymology. tywerrenge (Spencer and Gillen's 'churinga') is the Arrernte class-term for sacred objects, stone and wooden alike, including the bull-roarer — the wooden form being churinga irula. Spencer and Gillen record that the word doubles as a noun, 'a sacred emblem', and as a qualifying term meaning 'sacred or secret', so the bull-roarer's name is literally 'the sacred/secret thing'.
In February 1896 Paddy Byrne, the telegraph operator who spent half a century at Charlotte Waters on the edge of the South Australian border, posted Walter Baldwin Spencer a bullroarer used in the initiation ceremonies of the Lower Arrernte, his letter describing how it was made and swung. The slat was recorded as belonging to the Pultara skin class, and Byrne promised two more 'beating time' because the first ones he had got were too rough. It is one strand of the Charlotte Waters correspondence out of which Spencer and Gillen built their account of the sacred whirled slats of Central Australia.
Particulars
- Object
- A bullroarer (a flat wooden slat whirled on a cord to roar) used in initiation ceremonies, posted by P.M. Byrne to Baldwin Spencer with a letter describing its use and manufacture. It belonged to the Pultara class, one of the Central Australian skin/subsection classes, i.e. owned within that class rather than named for it. Byrne added that he meant to obtain two further examples 'beating time,' the earlier ones he had got being too rough. Blades of this kind survive: British Museum Oc1949,02.1, twenty-three centimetres of red-ochred wood cut with spirals and U-shapes on both faces and still wound with its human-hair cord, and three broad Central Australian slats in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1938.34.30–32, 28 to 34 centimetres long and up to 6.7 wide, incised and pierced at one end.
- Function
- Used in male initiation ceremonies.
Source
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, Spencer Papers, letter of 6 February 1896 from P. M. Byrne (Charlotte Waters) to Baldwin Spencer, Box 1A Section B item 17