A Possible Clue to the Source of 'Ballyhoo' and Some Queries

Abstract

5XtHERE did the word ballyhoo in the sense of a barker's spiel, noisy Vv advertising, etc., come from? On page 188 of the fourth edition of his Smerican Language (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), Mr. Mencken summarized three explanations: (1) It is connected with the name of Ballyhooly, a village in Cork County, Ireland. This explanation is given by Webster's NID (1934) and by Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1937). (2) It was a blend by circus people of ballet and whoop. (3) It originated on the Midway of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and was an imitation of the cry of dervishes in the Oriental Village, b'allah hoo, meaning 'Through God it is.' But Mr. Mencken accepted none of these explanations, for on page 19l of his book he listed the word among a group whose origins were yet to be discovered. All three bore to him the marks of being popular etymologies. I should like to suggest, as Eric Partridge very tentatively does under ballyhoo, that a search into seamen's talk might lead toward an answer to the question. A possible clue I find in Melville's Omoo (1847), in a passage in Cllapter 76. An Irish sailor is warning two men against shipping on the vesse] that he is on: 'And it's shipping yer after, my jewels, is it? . . . thin arrah! my livelies, jist be after sailing ashore in a jiffy.... Be off wid ye, thin, darlints, and steer clear of the likes of this ballyhoo of blazes as long as ye live. They murder us here every day, and starve us into the bargain.' By 'ballyhoo of blazes' the speaker meant an outcast ship, a pariah. The ship from which the sailors developed their derogatory 'ballyhoo of blazes' is the ballahou (ballahoo, ballyhoo), a fast-sailing, two-masted vessel, rigged with high fore-and-aft sails, much used in the West Indies. The foremast rakes forward, the luainmast aft. The word apparently took a long time to make its way into the dictionaries. I find it first in the Imperial Dictionary of the English Language by John Ogilvie, revised by Charles Annandale (London: Blackie and Son, 1882). Thence it passed to the Century Company's American reprint of the Imperial Dictionary in 1883; from there to the Century Dictionary (1889). It is in \tebster's International Dictionary of 1890 and in Funk and Wagnalls'