Euahlayi Narran River Gayandi / Gurraymi Boorah bullroarer

Gayandi / Gurraymi; garrarana (regional Yuwaalaraay)

Source term: Gayandi / Gurraymi

Gayandi: men's name for the Boorah spirit; Gurraymi: women's name for the same spirit. Parker also uses Gayandi for its bullroarer voice. garrarana: Yuwaalaraay word for 'bullroarer' (also 'dragonfly'), used in some Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay areas (Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay Yuwaalayaay Dictionary); not recorded by Parker for the Narran River community.

Among the Euahlayi, the hidden roar of the Boorah was Gayandi in men's speech and Gurraymi in women's — a spirit-voice heard from the scrub as old men whirled concealed boards. Parker recorded how Byamee, the All-Father, made the first. He began with a stone figure in a man's image, meant to knock out an initiate's tooth; it proved too strong and began eating the boys' faces, so Byamee turned it into Nahgul, a hairy devil that has haunted Boorah grounds ever since. A stone roarer came next, too heavy to sing. Then, chopping a coolabah by Weetalibah waterhole, he heard the flying chips whizz past — 'That is what I want,' he said, 'I'll make a Gayandi of wood.' He cut beefwood and kurrajong, hung them singing in the branches, and when his wives came asking about the strange voices he sent them off to build a fire and hid the boards away. Only after a man's fifth Boorah were those oval boards openly shown.

the women, such as were still young enough to bear children, stopped their ears, for should any such hear the Gurraymi, the women's name for the Gayandi, or Boorah spirit's voice, that spirit will first make them mad, then kill them.

K. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe (1905), p. 62

Particulars

Object

Oval wooden boards pointed at both ends, fastened to a string and swung round.

Function

Hidden Boorah spirit-voice; whirled to announce and summon the Boorah; revealed to men after the fifth initiation.