Rainbow Serpent
Also known as: Wagyl or Waugal (Noongar), Ngalyod (Kunwinjku, western Arnhem Land), many other names in other languages
Mythological Narrative
"Rainbow Serpent" is an umbrella term coined by the anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown in 1926 for a family of great serpent creators found across the continent, each known to its own people by its own name. The Bininj of western Arnhem Land know Ngalyod; the Yolngu of eastern Arnhem Land tell of the python Yurlungur; the Noongar of the south-west say the Wagyl carved the winding course of the Swan River; Anangu of the Central Desert speak of Wanampi coiled at the bottom of waterholes. Details differ — some serpents bear a kangaroo-like head or a mane trailing waterlilies — but all are bound to water: they dwell in permanent pools, travel with the wet-season floods, and arch across the sky as the rainbow after rain.
In Dreaming narratives the serpent is a maker of country. Tunnelling beneath the flat first earth, it raised ridges with its back, left riverbeds where it crawled, and sank waterholes where it rested. In western Arnhem Land, Ngalyod swallows those who disturb sacred places and vomits them up as rock; in the widely published Yolngu narrative of the Wagilag Sisters, Yurlungur swallows two sisters and their children and later disgorges them, a sequence that frames major public ceremony in the region.
Rock-art research by Paul Taçon and colleagues traces rainbow serpent imagery in Arnhem Land back thousands of years, making it one of the longest-running religious motifs known anywhere. The serpent remains the most common subject of Aboriginal painting today, and around many communities visitors are still asked to respect the waterholes where a serpent is said to live.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## A scholar's category
"Rainbow Serpent" is not an Aboriginal name. The anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown used it in a 1926 paper, "The Rainbow-Serpent Myth of Australia", to group together serpent beings he found in the traditions of many peoples across the continent, associated with water, rain, and the rainbow. The term stuck, and it is now used widely, including by some Aboriginal people speaking in English, but it can hide the differences between distinct beings with their own names, Countries, and laws.
## Some named beings
Among publicly known serpent beings associated with water are the Wagyl (or Waugal) of the Noongar people of south-western Western Australia, who shaped the rivers and waterways, including the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River); and Ngalyod of the Kunwinjku people of western Arnhem Land, who appears in publicly exhibited bark paintings. These are not simply local names for one being, and this site gives the Wagyl its own entry. Not every great snake in Aboriginal story is a "Rainbow Serpent": Kuniya at Uluṟu, for instance, is a woma python woman with her own story, and should not be folded into this category.
## Water, law, and care
In many traditions serpent beings are associated with permanent water, and with the law governing how people approach it; stories warn against disturbing certain waterholes. Some stories associated with serpent beings are restricted, and this site includes only those shared publicly.
## In wider culture
Popular books and artworks have made the "Rainbow Serpent" one of the best-known images of Aboriginal Australia worldwide. Readers who want to know more should look for stories told by the particular people concerned, under their own names for the being.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Rainbow Serpent.
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