Joe Bob Briggs

At 11:48 PM 12/15/2006, you wrote:
Hello, Joe Bob,

Arthur Cronos (the bloggard) here.

I don't know if you'll remember me. We've emailed a little bit a couple of years ago, and in the past I once posted a nice story about you. Well, *I* thought it was nice.

("Joe Bob Briggs and the Dallas Crimes Herald" at http://www.bloggard.com/blog//item/345 )

But what I am writing about today is something that has been worrying me recently.

My wife Adrienne asked me how to spell Yee-HAW!

I told her, of course. Everybody knows that.

But, now that I think about it, I find myself wondering about the etymology of Yee-Haw. I mean, do you suppose it harkens back to old Latin (Yeeum-Hawmus), or was it just something that Billy Joe Williams said one day, flying off the back of his horse, and somehow it caught on?

And of course that made me think of you.

I figure that, if anybody knows, you would be the one.

So Joe Bob, where did Yee-Haw come from? Do you know?

-- Arthur Cronos, the Bloggard http://bloggard.com

PS: I wouldn't bother you, but someday we're going to die, and before that day, we need to set things straight, at least as much as we can. Or maybe we should make a big mess. Now I'm wondering about that, too.

____________________________________________
From : Joe Bob Briggs <joebob@joebobbriggs.com>
Sent : Friday, December 29, 2006 11:34 AM

Dear Arthur,

Yee-Haw derives from the Middle English "yee," which became "ye" by the time of the King James Bible, a formal second-person pronoun normally used only in the singular but occasionally, when conjoined with qualifiers ("ye ungodly swine"), acceptable as an adjectival plural as part of an interjection. "Haw" was a borrowing from late 10th century Hungarian, a crude epithet used by soldiers to describe a rural imbecile (possibly a distant cousin of "harrow" or "harrower," applied to those who till the soil, who were overwhelmingly illiterate in the Middle Ages). The words "yee" and "haw" were never used together until 1478, when a farrier in Long Sutton, among the eastern fens of Lincolnshire, was accosted by angry sugarbeet farmers whose draft animals had been quarantined by the Duke of Rutland upon pain of taxation necessary for the upkeep of Belvoir Castle. Powerless to defend himself against the angry mob, he quickly extracted iron bits from his furnace with a crude blacksmithing tong and hurled the fiery missiles at the luckless yeomen. When they began to scatter, the farrier execrated them with curses, including, at the point of his maximum excitement, "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwww!"--the strict meaning of which would be something on the order of "you worthless lice-infested buffoons," but of course given a sanguine connotation by the fact that the farrier was exultant and triumphant.

I thought everyone knew that.

Hang in there,

Joe Bob

P.S. In case I don't already have it, send me your postal mailing addess.