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he writes (23-4), with reference to instruments called yili-yiki observed in north Queensland (to the north-east of area 'Y'), that 'hollow hardwood saplings' about from 7 to 9 ft long were observed in a region which included Cooktown, Laura, Palmerville, Maytown, Byerston, Bloomfield, the Daintree and Cape Grafton.
He adds that 'the use of this instrument on the Bloomfield, like the "bull-roarer", is taught at the initiation ceremony, but unlike the latter, it can be played in the camp before the gins and uninitiated males.
It is never employed in this locality for imitating the call of the cassowary (cf., the 'emus calls' of the Gulf country), though, curious to say, the blacks have a legend that it was (and still may be) used by certain spirits for that very purpose, long before they themselves 'knew how to use it'.
The resemblence between the words yiki-yiki and yiraki (or yidaki), the latter the name for the didjeridu in northeastern Arnhem Land (Yuulngu) languages, claims attention. According to information obtained from a Yuulngu man from Yirrkala, yiraki means 'emu throat'. On Groote Eylandt, the word for didjeridu, yiraga, is associated with throat only; there are no emus on the island.
In his study of words used for the hollow-log (Ubar) drum, poles and trumpets, Worms found that ubar, uwar and uluru (north west Arnhem Land) and ulpirra, ilpirra and uluburu (central Australia) were 'linguistic variations of the same stem'. Though not reserved for these instruments only, Worms concluded that 'the root meaning is revealed in some way in gilbir (East Kimb.), telling, saying, language, story, and in ma-galbiran, ma-gilbiran(West Kimb.), to enchant, to spell. But the radical meaning becomes really evident in the Western Victorian occurrence of kalpiran, kalpernera, kaprina, the dead soul of the deceased, ghost' (Worms 1953:280).
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