SPENCER1914-002 - ethnographic attestation
Jangman (Spencer's Yungman)
Australia - Elsey - Roper River headwaters (Jangman country) - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Purdagiair English
Purdagiair: Yungman (Jangman) word for the bullroarer, defined independently in Spencer's glossary ('bull-roarer. Yungman Tribe.'); no literal meaning recorded.
At Opobinga, near the old Elsey Station, a Nanung — a sugar-bag, or honeycomb, man — arose in the far-off times and never wandered from his camp. His spirit children still live in the trees and stones around it, coming out to enter the right women and be born; the Yungman held that each spirit came back alternately as boy and girl with every rebirth. The ancestor also kept many bull-roarers, which the Yungman — today's Jangman of the Elsey country — call Purdagiair.
He had, also, many bull-roarers, which the Yungman people call Purdagiair.
Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914), p. 267
- Object
- Named in the Opobinga tradition — the honeycomb ancestor 'had, also, many bull-roarers'; no physical description or figure given.
- Function
- Belonged to the Nanung (sugar-bag, honeycomb) ancestor at Opobinga in the origin-of-children tradition; no human ceremony or use recorded.
- Map confidence
- high - South Australian Museum Jangman language-group centroid (15 deg 40 min S, 132 deg 55 min E); the tradition's own anchor, Opobinga near old Elsey Station, lies within this country.
- Source location
- printed p. 267; glossary s.v. Purdagiair