The Bullroarer Atlas

FRAZER1913-011 - ethnographic attestation

Urabunna / Arabana

Central Australia - Lake Eyre region

Restricted

Spencer and Gillen's Figure 20 of wooden churinga: the Urabunna tribe's chimbaliri, no. 1, a smooth pointed sacred stick that the authors call...
Spencer and Gillen's Figure 20 of wooden churinga: the Urabunna tribe's chimbaliri, no. 1, a smooth pointed sacred stick that the authors call 'the equivalent of the bull-roarer or whirler of other authors,' shown alongside carved churinga of neighboring totems and, above, one wrapped in bark for carrying. Spencer & Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), fig. 20 Public domain Image source

chimbaliri / tjimbaliri English

Source term: sacred stick / Churinga / bull-roarer

Urabunna name for the sacred initiation stick or bull-roarer; spelled chimbaliri (1899) and tjimbaliri (1904).

Etymology. Chimbaliri is the Urabunna name for the sacred initiation stick or bullroarer, a word that women and children were never allowed to hear. They were taught instead that its sound was the voice of the spirit Witurna, who takes the boy away, cuts out his insides, gives him new ones, and returns him an initiated youth. (high confidence)

Among the Urabunna of the Lake Eyre country, the women and children were taught that the droning of the bull-roarer was the voice of a spirit called Witurna, who carried the boys off into the bush, cut out all of their insides, gave them new ones, and brought them back as initiated men. When Spencer recorded the belief at Old Peake Station in 1903, he noted that the women did not know the secret word for the stick; they were simply told it was "debil debil." The stick itself, the chimbaliri, was a plain piece of wood rounded at each end so that it had the general form of a wooden churinga, but with a quite plain surface, never incised or red-ochred. The Northern Urabunna made none of their own, borrowing them from the Southern Arunta or sending south for one, since they believed that if they made and sounded bull-roarers themselves the Arunta would be angry and ask why they made churinga when they had none of their own. After the initiation ordeal a youth was given a chimbaliri to carry about until his wound had healed.

The women imagine the sound of the Churinga to be the voice of a spirit called Witurna, who, they are taught to believe, takes the boys out into the bush, removes all of their insides, provides them with new ones, and brings them back in the form of initiated men.

Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (Macmillan, 1904), p. 258.
Function
Restricted initiation spirit-voice bullroarer with death/remaking myth.
Map confidence
medium - representative Arabana/Lake Eyre-region anchor; source does not give a ceremony locality
Source location
pp. 257-258 (tjimbaliri described; women told the sound is Witurna's voice) and p. 498 (chimbaliri given to the initiate; women must never see it)

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