The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MARKK1898-001

Yule River devil-scarers

Yule River, Pilbara, Western Australia

Sacred / spirit

Haddon's fig. 237: five models (A–E) of the bigu bull-roarers swung
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Haddon's fig. 237: five models (A–E) of the bigu bull-roarers swung Public domain · Image source

Teufelsscheucher (devil-scarer)

Source term: ornamentiertes Schwirrholz, Teufelsscheucher

Teufelsscheucher: 'devil-scarer', the museum's rendering of Clement's gloss for the Pilbara bullroarer. cora / boonangharry: Clement's names for the blade. djuno: the evil spirit it drove off.

On the Yule River these two ornamented bullroarers were devil-scarers. The djuno, the evil spirit, caused every sickness and every death; nobody died of natural causes. So the blades were set roaring over a sick man while the doctor stalked him in narrowing circles, roared again over the dead, and swung violently through the camp at the circumcision gathering to keep the djuno out. In the Pilbara the blade was the cora, or boonangharry.

Particulars

Object
Two ornamented bullroarers, MARKK E 3087 and E 3088.
Function
Catalogued as devil-scarers. Clement, who supplied them, describes Pilbara blades swung over the sick while the doctor circled the patient, swung at a death to drive off the djuno, and swung through the camp at circumcision.

Sources

  1. Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), Hamburg, collection database extract, Ozeanien bis 1920, inv. E 3087-E 3088 View
  2. Emile Clement, "Ethnographical Notes on the Western-Australian Aborigines," Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie 16 (1904), pp. 8-11 View

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.