The Bullroarer Atlas

No. CAPELL1956-007

Mawng uwar

Australia · Goulburn Islands and the mainland coast opposite, east to the King River, Braithwaite Point and Junction Bay, Northern Territory · Arnhem Land

Sacred / spirit

Period plate of outline drawings of fifteen bullroarers of different shapes, some engraved, with scale bars and figure numbers.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Mathews's bullroarers; figs. 7–8 are the Wiradjuri mudthega and moonibear 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')

Mawng speakers of the Goulburn Islands called the bullroarer uwar, and in their own vocabulary the word is the name of the Ubar ceremony. The ceremonial ground was wuwar too, and so were the initiates smeared with grease for it. Mawng country takes in the islands and the mainland opposite, east to the King River, Braithwaite Point and Junction Bay; the same name ran west through Iwaidja and Marrku and east to the Kunbarlang.

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
  • Marrku uwarAustralia · Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles 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.