The Bullroarer Atlas

MAT1898-010 - secondary catalog

Wiradthuri tribes on the upper Murrumbidgee

Australia - Upper Murrumbidgee River - Southeast

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Mathews' plate 9, figs. 7 and 8: the large mudthega and small moonibear bull-roarers of the Wiradjuri on the Macquarie and Bogan Rivers — the...
Mathews' plate 9, figs. 7 and 8: the large mudthega and small moonibear bull-roarers of the Wiradjuri on the Macquarie and Bogan Rivers — the same people whose upper-Murrumbidgee mundjeegong (cf. Howitt's 'Mudjigang') this page documents, though not that specific specimen. R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales, 1907, Plate 9 figs. 7-8 Public domain Image source

mundjeegong English

Source term: bull-roarer

mundjeegong (also Mudjigang/mudthega): the Wiradthuri bull-roarer; Burbung: the Wiradthuri male-initiation ceremony; Dhuramoolan: the being whose voice the bull-roarer carries; Baiamai (Baiame): the Wiradthuri All-Father who instituted the rite.

Etymology. Mundjeegong is the upper-Murrumbidgee Wiradjuri bull-roarer, the word Howitt writes Mudjigang (alongside Bobu) for the instrument the Duran-duran messenger carries when calling the people to the Burbung initiation; among Wiradjuri tribes generally the bull-roarer carried the voice of the destroyed being Dhuramoolan and was even called by his name. The word itself has no recorded literal meaning. (medium confidence)

On the upper Murrumbidgee the Wiradthuri bull-roarer was the mundjeegong, the instrument R. H. Mathews knew by the triangular notch cut into its broad end. Mathews and Howitt together show what that wood carried. In the Wiradjuri Burbung the roarer the messenger called Mudjigang summoned the camps to the initiation ground, where the medicine-man swung it through the ceremony and the women were penned behind a screen of boughs while its din was made to frighten them. Its voice was the voice of Dhuramoolan, the being whose cry, the Wiradthuri said, Baiamai had sealed into every tree so that men could reproduce it. The boys had a tooth knocked out and were made into men; the women, kept from the instrument, were left believing that Dhuramoolan still came in person to carry the boys off, burn them, and bring them back to life.

if it is to call the people together for initiation ceremonies, he carries a bull-roarer (Bobu or Mudjigang)

A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), p. 692
Object
Mathews compares the triangular notch of the mooroonga with bullroarers called mundjeegong on the upper Murrumbidgee.
Map confidence
low_medium - representative coordinate for named people, ceremony, river, or region in Mathews
Source location
Mathews 1898, JAI 27:52-60 (mundjeegong notch note); Howitt 1904, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 692 ('he carries a bull-roarer (Bobu or Mudjigang)') and pp. 583-586 (Wiradjuri Burbung; medicine-man sounds the bull-roarer, women hidden and frightened); Mathews 1896, "The Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," JAI 25:295-318 (Dhuramoolan-voice myth; burnt-and-resurrected deception)

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