EYLMANN1908-002 - ethnographic attestation
Wulwulam (Eylmann's Wulwanga)
Australia - Mary River headwaters - Pine Creek, Northern Territory - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Source term: Schwirrhölzer
Used once, then thrown away: in the many ceremonies before a Wulwulam boy’s circumcision, bullroarers and clapsticks saw extensive use, and once the consecration was complete the whirled sticks were discarded. Women and children could not be present; a boy who had watched was left uncircumcised. Before admission the elders took each novice into the solitude of the bush to learn the tribe’s laws and customs, hut-building, and fire-making; at the operation itself a wad — sometimes the little pouch that would afterwards hold his own foreskin — was pushed into his mouth to stop his screaming.
Bei einigen finden Schwirrhölzer und Klapperstäbe ... eine ausgedehnte Verwendung. Die benutzten Stäbe werden nach vollzogener Weihe weggeworfen.
In some of them, bullroarers and clapsticks find extensive use. The sticks that have been used are thrown away once the consecration is complete.
Eylmann, Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien (1908), p. 258
- Object
- No specimen described; Eylmann attests Schwirrhoelzer (bullroarers) used alongside clapsticks in the ceremonies preceding circumcision. His Plate XXIV fig. 6 shows the clapsticks, not a bullroarer.
- Function
- Bullroarers and clapsticks saw extensive use in ceremonies preceding circumcision; the used sticks were thrown away once the consecration was complete; women and children were excluded.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - South Australian Museum (Tindale) Wulwulam tribal-area reference coordinate 132deg10'E x 13deg50'S, near the head of the Mary River ('Head of Mary River; west to Pine Creek... south nearly to Katherine'); not a ceremony site.
- Source location
- p. 258 (scan n316)
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women