DIXON2022-001 - lexical attestation
Jabunbarra Jirrbal and Girramay bibu bullroarer
Australia - Murray Upper-Cardwell rainforest, northeastern Queensland - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
bibu English / Dyirbal dialect labels
Source term: bull-roarer
bibu: Jirrbal and Girramay name for the bullroarer.
In the rainforest country between the upper Murray River and Cardwell in North Queensland, Jirrbal and Girramay speakers strung a flat blade of carved wood and swung it to a roar they called bibu. The example R. M. W. Dixon collected came from Spider Henry, a Jirrbal man who had cut his from jalŋgi — weeping brown pine.
bull-roarer — flat piece of carved wood, with a string attached to the sharp end, whirled around to produce a load roaring noise
Dixon 2022:160
- Object
- Flat carved wooden blade with a string attached to the sharp end, whirled to produce a roaring noise. Dixon's field specimen from Jirrbal consultant Spider Henry was made from jalŋgi, weeping brown pine (Podocarpus grayae).
- Function
- Sound production; whirled on a string to produce a roaring noise. No ceremony, restriction, or spirit identity is recorded for the Jirrbal/Girramay term bibu itself; a separate Mamu/Warrgamay term in the same dictionary entry, wungumali, also names a spirit, but that fact is not attached to bibu.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Jumbun / Murray Upper community anchor for the shared Jirrbal-Girramay row; the source does not give the specimen's collection coordinates.
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 160; entry Jo6