Darkinung minyawoak

minyawoak

Source term: bullroarer; sacred bullroarer

minyawoak: the bullroarer. Burbung: the initiation ceremony. watyoor: the women's camp to which the novices returned. Dhurramoolun: the being whose earthen figure lay on the sacred ground.

The bullroarer went ahead of the Burbung. Each Darkinung messenger who set out to summon the neighbouring tribes carried one in his belt, wrapped in a piece of animal skin. Once the camps had gathered it sounded morning and evening. On the day the boys were taken the women were covered with rugs and bushes, two men swung the minyawoak close by, and each boy's guardian, usually his brother-in-law, led him off along the path to the sacred ring, past carvings in the turf and on the trees and the great earthen figure of Dhurramoolun. When a boy's front tooth was knocked out, a bullroarer roared just out of sight in the bush. Days later, on a cleared oval, two men stepped in swinging the minyawoak, and the boys were told to look. Armed men rushed up to warn each of them never to tell. Joe Gooburra and Charley Clark, the last two initiated men of the Darkinung, remembered it all in the 1890s.

two men enter and commence swinging the bullroarers (minyawoak), and the boys are told to look at them.

R. H. Mathews, "The Burbung of the Darkinung Tribes," Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 10 (1897), p. 9

Particulars

Object

Bullroarers swung on cords at the Burbung initiation; the messenger's sacred bullroarer travelled wrapped in a piece of animal skin. Material and size not recorded.

Function

Burbung initiation: carried by the messengers who summoned the tribes; sounded near the main camp at dawn and dusk; swung close by while the women were covered and the boys taken away; sounded unseen during tooth extraction; finally swung before the novices, who were told to look, then warned on pain of punishment to keep the secret.