Wilmurra, a gidya-wood blade

Wilmurra; Wobbilcong (Moreton Bay)

Source term: bull-roarer

Wilmurra: the name for the bull-roarer that came with this blade from Brisbane; at Moreton Bay the same instrument was called Wobbilcong.

Etymology. Wilmurra is recorded as the native word for the bull-roarer among the people the Metropolitan Museum labels 'Algamurra.' The 1889 collection register gives the name and glosses it 'bull roarer' but records no further meaning, and the ethnonym is not otherwise attested.

A bull-roarer of gidya wood — the dense inland acacia of Australia's arid country — fourteen and five-eighths inches long, entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1889 with the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments under the name "Wilmurra." The register's "Algamurra" answers to no documented language, but W. I. Weatherill of Brisbane, who sent the blade, told the museum what it was for. These instruments were used only during the ceremony when the young men were initiated, had the class marks cut on the right shoulder, received their names as warriors and became entitled to marry; through the whole of it one of the old men walked round the Bora circle whirling the Wilmurra and barking like a dog. Twirled slowly it began to burr, the sound rising with the speed, and an experienced native ended with a spasmodic jerk that gave a loud unearthly shriek Weatherill had heard on a calm night two miles off. Each tribe kept two sizes, and at Moreton Bay the same thing was called Wobbilcong.

The string attached is made of human hair.

W. I. Weatherill, quoted in Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, vol. II: Oceanica (1914), no. 738, pp. 45-46

Particulars

Object

Gidya-wood bull-roarer called Wilmurra, fourteen and five-eighths inches, sent from Brisbane by W. I. Weatherill; Metropolitan Museum of Art 89.4.738.