The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-162 - museum specimen

Gugu Yalanji area

Australia - Butcher's Hill - Boggy Creek Reserve southwest of Cooktown - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

Representative—not this record’s object: Australian herringbone-carved bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own...
Representative—not this record’s object: Australian herringbone-carved bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Emile Clement, Ethnographische Beobachtungen in Nordwest-Central-Australien (1903), Plate IV; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek scan Public domain Image source
A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the...
Representative image. A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the general form; not the Martuthunira boonangharry from the Pilbara coast documented here. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-2306-7) CC BY-SA Image source

jinna-juronggor English / local name

Source term: form of roarer / charm or whirler

jinna-juronggor: local name recorded for the painted protective whirler; British Museum comparison spells jinna-jurronggor

At Butcher's Hill southwest of Cooktown, a painted wooden jinna-juronggor hung beside a baby. The breeze set its corded blade spinning, and the moving charm protected the child. Walter Roth found the same roarer form around Cooktown and the Bloomfield River, where anything near or beneath its white-striped red blade became taboo. Two Gugu Yalanji-area examples survive in the Australian Museum, still preserving their bark-fibre strings.

A painted wooden charm or whirler was hung in a breeze near a baby, so that it would spin around in the wind and protect the child.

Khan 1993:164, summarizing Roth Bulletin 11
Object
Painted oblong wooden plate, 22.7 x 5.4 cm, with 29 cm hand-spun bark-fibre string through a terminal hole and gum cement at the perforation; exact E.13712 photograph. A second object E.13713 is 29.3 x 8.3 cm with 60.2 cm string.
Function
Hung in a breeze near a baby so it spun in the wind and protected the child; Roth also says this roarer form made things near or beneath it taboo.
Map confidence
high - Butchers Hill homestead anchor matching the two exact cataloged objects; Roth also records Cooktown and Bloomfield River distribution.
Source location
Khan 1993:164; Roth 1908:75 and plate XX figs. 1, 3

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