The Bullroarer Atlas

No. CAPELL1956-009

Urningangk uwarm

Australia · East Alligator River country near Gunbalanya (Oenpelli), western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory

Sacred / spirit

The Sherlock-district blade on Schmeltz's Plate IV
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. The Sherlock-district blade on Schmeltz's Plate IV Public domain · Image source

uwarm

Source term: BULLROARER: uwarm

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

Urningangk speakers named the bullroarer uwarm, after Ubarr, their name for the ceremony of the hollow log whose Snake shares its name. Urningangk is the original tongue of the Manilakarr clan of the East Alligator River near Gunbalanya (Oenpelli). With Mengerrdji and Erre it forms a small family of its own, and Mengerrdji gave the same word.

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer, called uwarm; 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
  • Mawng uwarAustralia · Goulburn Islands and the mainland coast opposite, east to the King River, Braithwaite Point and Junction Bay, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit

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