Boaliri (the younger Wawalag sister)
Yolngu · deity · Yolngu traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Boaliri is the junior of the two Wawalag sisters (Wagilag sisters in north-central Arnhem Land), an ancestral woman of the Dhuwa moiety; some recorded tellings give her name as Garangal. Heavily pregnant, she travelled north with her elder sister Waimariwi, and the two camped at the well of the Great Copper Python at Mirrirmina. As the storm gathered they sang and danced through the night to hold off the rising serpent, but Yurlunggur swallowed them and their children before disgorging them. Their songs and the swallowing are the heart of the Kunapipi ritual recorded by W. Lloyd Warner and Ronald M. Berndt.
Domains
- fertility
Powers
- to sing and dance through the night to hold back the rising python
Epithets
- WawalagRonald M. Berndt, Kunapipi: A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Religious Cult (1951) (secondary)
Relations
- sibling: Waimariwi (the elder Wawalag sister)Younger sister of Waimariwi; the two are the Wawalag sisters swallowed by the python.W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization (1937) (primary)
Sources
- Boaliri is the younger of the two Wawalag (Wagilag) sisters of the Kunapipi cycle, an ancestral woman who, with her elder sister, was swallowed and later disgorged by the Great Copper Python Yurlunggur, an ordeal re-enacted in Yolngu initiation.: W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe (New York: Harper, 1937; rev. 1958) (primary); Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi: A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Religious Cult (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1951) (secondary)