The Bullroarer Atlas

DIXON2022-001 - lexical attestation

Jabunbarra Jirrbal / Girramay

Australia - Murray Upper-Cardwell rainforest, northeastern Queensland - Oceania - Sahul

Function not recorded

Representative—not this record’s object: Australian herringbone-carved bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own...
Representative—not this record’s object: Australian herringbone-carved bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Emile Clement, Ethnographische Beobachtungen in Nordwest-Central-Australien (1903), Plate IV; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek scan Public domain Image source
A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the...
Representative image. A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the general form; not the Martuthunira boonangharry from the Pilbara coast documented here. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-2306-7) CC BY-SA Image source

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
printed p. 160; entry Jo6

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