The Bullroarer Atlas

No. CAPELL1956-005

Kunbarlang uwar

Australia · Coast between Hawkesbury Point and Junction Bay, inland toward Table Hill, western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory

Sacred / spirit

Roth's plate image of the Butcher's Hill jinna-juronggor, with white herringbone bands and a notch at the free end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Butcher's Hill jinna-juronggor: white herringbone Public domain · Image source

uwar

Source term: BULLROARER: uwar

uwar: the name of the Ubar ceremony, given in answer to 'bullroarer' (Capell 1956, p. 18; Capell & Hinch 1970, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony')

For the bullroarer, Kunbarlang speakers gave uwar, the coastal name of the Ubar ceremony, where their sister language Kunwinjku used its stone-country form, gubar. Kunbarlang country follows the coast between Hawkesbury Point and Junction Bay, east of the Goulburn Islands, and runs inland toward Table Hill. In the Ubar, men beat a great hollow log whose cry was the voice of the rite, and the Snake of the ceremony bore its name.

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer, called uwar; its form is not recorded.
Function
Named for the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of west Arnhem Land.

Sources

  1. Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18 View
  2. Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony' View
  3. Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale (eds), Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (ANU Press, 2011), pp. 403–407 View
  4. Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951)
  • Amurdak uwarAustralia · Eastern shores of Van Diemen Gulf, Murgenella and Cooper creeks, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Gunavidji wubarAustralia · Liverpool River mouth around Maningrida, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Gurrgoni wubarAustralia · Cadell River, south-east of the Tomkinson River headwaters, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Marrku uwarAustralia · Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Mawng uwarAustralia · Goulburn Islands and the mainland coast opposite, east to the King River, Braithwaite Point and Junction Bay, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Mengerrdji uwarmAustralia · Alligator Rivers country around Gunbalanya (Oenpelli), western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.