The Bullroarer Atlas

No. CAPELL1956-006

Marrku uwar

Australia · Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay, Northern Territory · Arnhem Land

Sacred / spirit

Drawing of both faces of a long narrow bullroarer covered in concentric rectangles, with small cross-sections at right.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Both faces of an Oscar Ranges bullroarer, Kimberley 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')

On Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay, Marrku speakers named the bullroarer uwar, the name of the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of that coast. Marrku belongs to the same small family as Iwaidja and Mawng, and all three gave the same answer: the name of the rite, not of the slat.

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
  • Kunbarlang uwarAustralia · Coast between Hawkesbury Point and Junction Bay, inland toward Table Hill, western Arnhem Land, 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.