Kamilaroi Weir River murrawan and mooniburrigean

murrawan / mooniburrigean

Source term: bull-roarer

murrawan: Kamilaroi name for the bull-roarer used to summon tribes to the Bora; mooniburrigean is the smaller bull-roarer used at the same ceremony.

Etymology. Murrawan is the Kamilaroi name of the Bora bull-roarer, which Mathews says also went by the name Dhurramoolan, after the dreaded being who attends the initiation and whose voice the instrument's roar represents. No literal meaning of murrawan itself is recorded.

At the Bora ground the Kamilaroi staged the coming of Dhurramoolan for the women to hear. As the novices were led away, a headman called out "Here he comes!" and others shouted "Go away!", as if addressing the malevolent being who presides over the ceremonies; men snatched up firesticks and flung them into the ring, scattering the embers, so the women would believe Dhurramoolan had done it when he came for the boys. Inside the ground the guardians told the novices the truth on pain of death: the roar was no monster but the murrawan swung by men — "these instruments represent the voice of Dhurramoolan," and every such sound they had ever heard had been made this way. R.H. Mathews, who attended the Tallwood Bora of 1895, was given the murrawan that had mustered the tribes to it: nearly 11½ inches of mulga wood with six notches along each edge, smaller than the eighteen-to-twenty-inch belar slats swung in the principal ceremonies, beside which the Kamilaroi also used a smaller bull-roarer called mooniburrigean.

The bull-roarer, murrawan, here shown was given to me by a Kamilaroi tribe on the Weir River, Queensland, and was used in mustering the tribes to attend a Bora at Tallwood, at which I was present.

R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), Figs. 5 and 6

Particulars

Function

Murrawan was used in mustering tribes to attend a Bora at Tallwood; larger instruments were used in principal ceremonies, with a smaller mooniburrigean also used.