Nyulnyul (Nyul Nyul), Beagle Bay

mudamud

Nyulnyul mudamud, recorded for a (large) bullroarer obtained by trade "from Derby way"; the Arrernte loanword tjuringa/churinga was also applied locally to personal sacred boards.

Etymology. Nyulnyul minburr names both the bullroarer or tjuringa and a culture hero who punishes evil-doers through Dalor, the rainbow. Dampier Land tradition credits the institution of the two kinds of tjuringa, kalikurru and minburr, to the culture-hero Jamarr, alongside circumcision, subincision and the blood rites.

On the western Dampier Peninsula, around the Beagle Bay mission country of the Nyulnyul, the bullroarer was a sacred object of the men's law: an elongated flat slat of wood on a cord, twirled around the head to produce a buzzing roar, kept among the personal sacred boards each initiated man owned. These instruments belonged to male initiation and ceremony — and to love magic — and were forbidden to women and the uninitiated, hidden away in the branches of trees out of bounds to the young. Its sound was understood as more than noise: when the bullroarer resounded, the Nyulnyul said, they took it for a spirit, "really the devil." When A. P. Elkin visited in 1927-28 he gathered information on "initiation, the bull-roarer and certain culture-heroes and the songs associated with such, all of which is tabu to the women and uninitiated." The local word recorded for one, a large example traded in from the Derby direction, was mudamud. A perforated, incised slat collected at Beagle Bay and held at the Smithsonian preserves the form. Elkin, working the same country in the 1920s, was told what a doctor carries inside his own body: quartz crystals, a small snake, and short sticks shaped like bullroarers, six or eight inches long, called koranad, kept in the small of the back. The instrument the men swung in the open had a hidden double lodged in the doctor's body, lying beside the snake.

Among the sacred objects were various types of bullroarers, musical instruments associated with male ceremonial activity, including love magic. These were made from an elongated flat piece of wood attached to a string, which was twirled around the head to produce a buzzing sound.

William B. McGregor, A Grammar of Nyulnyul (Pacific Linguistics, Australian National University), §1.3 on Nyulnyul ceremonial objects.

Particulars

Object

An elongated flat slat of wood, pointed at both ends, perforated at one end for a cord, and incised on both faces with squared geometric patterns; whirled around the head to produce a buzzing roar. The Smithsonian specimen is catalogued both as a bull-roarer and by the loanword "churinga." Larger examples were traded in: a big bullroarer was obtained "from Derby way."

Function

A sacred whirled slat of male initiation and ceremony, also used in love magic; its resounding voice was taken for a spirit, and it was tabu to women and the uninitiated.