HERCUS2017-001 - ethnographic attestation
Papapa's stolen bullroarer
Australia - South and west of Diyari country - northern Lake Torrens - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer
Papapa: maternal grandfather in Kuyani; the ancestral turkey's nickname, not the instrument's name.
The ancestral turkey is tied to initiation across a wide stretch of country south and west of Diyari lands, and the ordinary word for turkey is never used of him. In the stories he is Papapa — 'maternal grandfather' in Kuyani — because of one story in particular. Again and again, grandfather warns his grandson not to touch his bag of ceremonial objects. The boy gets away with the bullroarer anyway and races over the landscape, standing on hilltop after hilltop to swing it, with the furious old man struggling along behind. In the end the grandfather cuts him off on a narrow peninsula and kills him. Nicknames like Papapa were not secret, Hercus notes, merely familiar: to anyone who knew the story, the grandfather's identity was obvious.
the young boy escapes with a bullroarer and races from hill to hill all over the landscape. He swings it standing on top of the hills, with the furious grandfather struggling along after him
Hercus 2017, printed p. 131
- Object
- A bullroarer kept in an ancestral turkey's bag of ceremonial objects; the story gives it no physical description.
- Function
- Stolen from a grandfather's bag of ceremonial objects and swung from hilltops by the fleeing boy, who is pursued and killed for it.
- Source
- Luise Hercus, Looking at some details of Reuther's work, in German Ethnography in Australia, ANU Press, 2017
- Source location
- printed p. 131 / PDF p. 157
- Source confidence
- medium Representative northern Lake Torrens / Beltana-Leigh Creek corridor anchor; Hercus gives a broad story region, not a route.
- Initiation rite