YURLUNGGUR
The serpent yurlunggur, from a modern aboriginal bark painting by Paddy Dhatangu. Yurlunggur is coiled around the wawilak sisters and their sons, who stand among the footprints made by the sisters in their attempts to escape from the creature.
The Wawilak Myth The swallowing of the wawilak sisters and their sons is reinacted during the initiation ceremony for adolescent yolngu boys. Each episode of the rite, which represents a symbolic death before rebirth as an adult, is accompanied by songs which describe, in great detail, the relevant part of the myth as it unfolds. The songs form part of an extended cycle which runs to many hundreds of verses in the course of the ceremony. Yolngu women take the role of the travelling sisters, and the accompanying songs commemorate what happened at each of the landmarks on the sister's journey, such as waterholes and rocks. Later in the ceremony, the men, taking the part of the serpent Yurlunggur, "swallow" the boys by sweeping them up and carry them off to the seclusion of the sacred initiation ground, which women are forbidden from entering. When the boys return after initiation, they are regarded as having been 'regurgitated' by the snake. Although the story of the wawilak sisters has been teh subject of extensive study by anthropologists, it is only one of a large body of myths which are of great spiritual and ritual importance to the yolngu.
