I was told, by a friend of mine who works with aborigines out by Alice, that the wood selected depends entirely on what the predominant local timber is, and that it was usual for naturally hollowed roots or branches to be used. These were finished by hand, but the bulk of the work was done by mother nature with termites etc. So bamboo, or eucalupt, or whatever... up to the recent discovery of the PVC pipe. Also, as has been pointed out, they were usually prized possessions and decorated - for a specific purpose too - so if there is a connection with the irish term for black, it would have referred to the player, not the instrument.

Quite apart from the whole question of whether the thing has an authentic aborigine name, a made-up pseudo-aboriginal name, or irish colonists named the didg after seeing the thing in Oz, or even whether the ancient irish had a similar instrument, has anybody else wondered why these discoveries of "lost" creations of the irish ancient culture are found in bogs? Was this a result of an form of positive action by early music critics? If so, what are they going to find in the bogs two or three thousand years from now?