MUS2026-303 - museum specimen
Two complete Victorian hair-cord rigs
Australia - Victoria
Restricted
PEER BOOR E GAH
Source term: Bullroarer
Peer Boor E Gah: the local name recorded with this Victorian bullroarer; it is not translated in the record.
A blade of fourteen centimetres, a stick of forty-eight, and between them a cord spun from human hair: the whole apparatus survives, which is rare. In the Victorian ceremonies A. W. Howitt recorded, a bullroarer of this kind travelled as a credential. When a Wurundjeri headman on the Yarra wanted to make boys into men, his messenger carried one, along with a man's kilt, as the summons to the Talangun - and it was kept hidden from women and children the whole way.
- Object
- Bullroarer, 140 x 35 mm, joined by a cord of human-hair string to a 477 mm stick. A second complete Victorian rig in the same museum, 1938.34.28.1, pairs a 424-millimetre blade with its stick on an assembly reaching 622 millimetres.
- Function
- Secret-sacred men's ceremonial object, restricted to initiated men; no specific rite recorded.
- Source
- Pitt Rivers Museum 1900.55.277.1
- Source location
Page references
1900.55.277.1; prm-object-39675
- Source confidence
- medium Broad Victoria anchor; the exact collecting place is unrecorded.