The Bullroarer Atlas

MOIZO1992-001 - ethnographic attestation

Bunuba novice's ancestral-voice roarer

Fitzroy River and the Napier, Oscar and Leopold ranges, south-west Kimberley, Western Australia

Restricted

Representative—not this record’s object: an Oscar Ranges bullroarer, edge of Bunuba country.
Representative — not this record’s object. · an Oscar Ranges bullroarer, edge of Bunuba country. · Public domain Image source

Source term: rhombe

A Bunuba boy's initiation began with a kidnapping. His elder sisters' husbands carried him off to the camp of a neighbouring people and left him there, to explain that he was lost and beg to be taken home. Gathered with other boys, he was led round the villages twice: once to be circumcised, and once to be returned to his family as a man. When the novices were taken to the cutting place, the women stayed behind, wailing as if for a death. Then came four or five weeks naked in a bough shelter, speaking only in signs, and there each novice was given his own roarer, a flat oblong of wood on a cord of plaited hair, made for him by his father's father. Whirled, it gave the voice of the ancestral spirits. It was a small copy of the churinga he would not handle until he was nearly thirty. In this country it was two giant Rainbow Serpents who made the Fitzroy River and brought circumcision.

Quand on fait tourner ce rhombe, il émet un son particulier censé être la voix des esprits ancestraux.

When this rhombe is whirled, it gives out a particular sound held to be the voice of the ancestral spirits.

Bernard Moizo, L'État du monde en 1492 (1992), p. 420
Object
A flat, oblong wooden roarer on a cord of plaited hair, made for each novice; a miniature of his churinga.
Function
Given to each novice in seclusion after circumcision; whirled, its sound is the voice of the ancestral spirits.
Source
Bernard Moizo, "La circoncision, un rite d'initiation australien," in Guy Martinière and Consuelo Varela (eds), L'État du monde en 1492 (Paris: La Découverte, 1992), pp. 419-420; Bernard Moizo, "« Les serpents arc-en-ciel viennent toujours du nord »: relations passées et présentes entre une population et un animal symbolique dans le Nord-Ouest de…
Source location
Page references

1992 pp. 419-420; 2007 pp. 734, 736

Source confidence
high
Location note
Centre of Bunuba country between Windjana Gorge, Tunnel Creek and Leopold Downs. Moizo's base, Junjuwa at Fitzroy Crossing, already anchors an unattributed museum record (MUS2026-163).

Regions: Australia · Sahul

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