The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-034 - ethnographic attestation

Nyulnyul (Nyul Nyul)

Western side of the Dampier Peninsula (Beagle Bay area), Kimberley region, Western Australia

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Spencer and Gillen's photographed churinga illustrates the general Central Australian form; the Nyulnyul mudamud of the Dampier Peninsula is a...
Representative image. Spencer and Gillen's photographed churinga illustrates the general Central Australian form; the Nyulnyul mudamud of the Dampier Peninsula is a pointed, geometrically incised slat catalogued by the Smithsonian under both 'bull-roarer' and the loanword 'churinga' — a larger example was said to have come 'from Derby way,' but neither is shown here. Spencer & Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), fig. 20 Public domain Image source

mudamud Nyulnyul

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. (high confidence)

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. Ethnographers working there from the 1900s onward describe 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, the record adds, 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: one recorded Nyulnyul sentence has the speakers say that when the bullroarer resounded, 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.

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.
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.
Map confidence
high - Beagle Bay, the named locality of the collected specimen and the principal settlement of Nyulnyul coastal country on the western Dampier Peninsula
Source location
McGregor, Grammar of Nyulnyul, §1.3 (ceremonial objects, "various types of bullroarers... twirled around the head"; "a large bullroarer (mudamud) from Derby way"); §1.3.3 initiation, quoting Elkin 1933:441 fieldnotes; §9.3.4 ex. (9-175) ("[As the bullroarer resounded] we said... it was really the devil," Nekes & Worms 1953:519); SI record nmnhanthropology_8398360.

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