The Bullroarer Atlas

FRAZER1894-001 - ethnographic attestation

Wonghi / Wonghibon

Australia - New South Wales

Restricted

A plain oval Aboriginal Australian bullroarer, its surface finely striated and pierced with a single hole at one end — shown for the general...
Representative image. A plain oval Aboriginal Australian bullroarer, its surface finely striated and pierced with a single hole at one end — shown for the general type, not a specimen tied to the Wonghi (Wonghibon) of New South Wales. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. TM-2670-1051) Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

At the Bora of the Wonghi, the moment a novice's tooth was knocked out a loud humming noise rose from the cleared ground, made by a flat piece of wood with serrated edges, holed at one end, strung and whirled. The uninitiated were not even allowed to see it; women were forbidden to be present, and the penalty for a woman who witnessed the ceremony, by accident or otherwise, was death, as was probably the penalty for revealing its secrets. The version permitted to outsiders held that each youth, sent away one by one, was met by a Being called Thuremlin, half blackfellow and half spirit, who took him a distance off, killed him, in some instances cut him up, then restored him to life and knocked out a tooth. The account is A. L. P. Cameron's, the primary ethnographer of the Wonghibon, first published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute in 1885 and later reproduced by Howitt in 1904; Cameron noted that the Thuremlin story was only what was told to the women and children, and that though he had known the Wonghi for many years the men had carefully kept the real secrets of the Bora from him.

When the tooth is knocked out, a loud humming noise is heard, which is made with an instrument of the following description: a flat piece of wood is made with serrated edges, and having a hole at one end, to which a string is attached, and this swung round produces a humming noise. The uninitiated are not even allowed to see this instrument. Women are forbidden to be present at these ceremonies, and should one, by accident or otherwise, witness them, the penalty is death.

A. L. P. Cameron, "Notes on Some Tribes of New South Wales," Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. XIV (1885), p. 357
Function
Secret male initiation instrument; women and uninitiated people were forbidden to see it, and the surrounding ritual dramatized death and restoration by Thurmulun.
Map confidence
medium - representative central/western New South Wales anchor for Wonghibon/Wongaibon; Howitt gives the tribal country north of the Lachlan but not a ceremony place
Source location
Cameron 1885, JAI XIV, pp. 357-358 (section 7, "The Bora Ceremonies"; bull-roarer/tooth/penalty-is-death passage on p. 357, Thuremlin death-and-revival on p. 358); article pp. 344-370. Conveyed (compressed) at Howitt 1904:588-589, whose footnote cites the article opening at p. 344.

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