Bundandaba: "They will eat you!"

bundandaba

Source term: Bundandaba or smaller bullroarer

bundandaba: the smaller bullroarer, and the final initiation rite named for it. Toara: the preliminary initiation. toongbirraman: the mock-killing performance. Kappaian and Deawai: the two cycles (halves) of the section system.

The Toara made a boy a novice; only the Bundandaba made him a man. Six months to a year after the first rite, in the country between the New South Wales border and Port Curtis, the initiated men of neighbouring tribes gathered again. On the last morning the novices were laid down under rugs and bushes, and they heard the sound of the bundandaba, the smaller bullroarer, coming nearer and nearer. "Here they come! They will eat you!" their guardians cried, pulling them to their feet. Twenty yards off stood two head men, swinging it on a three-foot string from the end of a pliable rod. They rubbed it on each novice's penis, navel and armpits, then gave every boy a bundandaba of his own, to be kept from anyone uninitiated. The two halves of society took turns: whichever had staged the mock killing, the other must show the bullroarer. Once his voice had broken and his beard grown, the new man could claim his promised wife.

Presently they hear the sound of the Bundandaba or smaller bullroarer coming nearer and nearer.

R. H. Mathews, "The Bundandaba Ceremony of Initiation in Queensland" (1910), trans. Christine Winter, in Culture in Translation (2007), p. 219

Particulars

Object

The smaller bullroarer, tied to a string about three feet long fastened to the thin end of a pliable rod used as a handle. The final rite took its name from it.

Function

Bundandaba, the final initiation held six months to a year after the Toara: the approaching sound terrified the covered novices; two head men swung it, rubbed it on each novice's penis, navel and armpits, and gave each a bundandaba of his own under a vow of secrecy. The division that had staged the mock killing could not be the one to show the bullroarer.