Hin and yon? - 01/01/06 10:10 PM
Last night in a drunken New Year's Eve stupor, I sent an SMS to a friend, letting her know that I would not, unfortunately, be able to attend her party, because I didn't have a safe way to transport myself "hin and yon".
Upon more sober reflection this morning, I questioned the legitimacy of said expression. The main source of my unease is that "hin und her" is a commonly used German expression, meaning "to and fro". I've just returned from a year in Berlin, and am well aware that I've been adulterating my English with German.
First, I hoped that "hin" could be considered an archaic English word, stemming from the West Germanic roots of our language, but having fallen into disuse (except among drunken SMS senders). Unfortunately, I was unable to find "hin" in any online Old English dictionaries...
A Google search revealed 32 occurrences of "hin and yon". Not an overwhelming show of support--but it could have been worse, I suppose. A few of the 32 pages were from miscellaneous bloggers and the ilk (showing that I'm not, at least, utterly alone in my intuition to include the expression in modern usage). The majority of the 32 pages described variants of a folk song entitled "Jesus, Jesus, Rest your Head," which one page suggested as having originated in Southern Appalachia.
A quick foray into Wikipedia suggested that German Moravians constituted a significant chunk of the populace in Appalachia, and the South, in particular, was peopled by a hodge-podge of descendants of these German-speakers and Scotch-Irish folk.
My working hypothesis is that the German-speaking peoples of Appalachia led to the inclusion of "hin" in a folk song (and perhaps the Scotch-Irish contributed the "yon"?). I spent a part of my childhood in Virginia (in a suburb of DC--not in Appalachia), so I suppose I may have come across the expression honestly. It may be more likely, however, that convergent evolution is at work here, and that a jumbled German-English patois led both the Applachians and myself to independently coin an expression born of both languages.
My questions to you: Are any of you folks familiar with this expression? If so, what are its likely origins? Is it still being actively used anywhere?
Cheers, and Happy New Year,
Brian
Upon more sober reflection this morning, I questioned the legitimacy of said expression. The main source of my unease is that "hin und her" is a commonly used German expression, meaning "to and fro". I've just returned from a year in Berlin, and am well aware that I've been adulterating my English with German.
First, I hoped that "hin" could be considered an archaic English word, stemming from the West Germanic roots of our language, but having fallen into disuse (except among drunken SMS senders). Unfortunately, I was unable to find "hin" in any online Old English dictionaries...
A Google search revealed 32 occurrences of "hin and yon". Not an overwhelming show of support--but it could have been worse, I suppose. A few of the 32 pages were from miscellaneous bloggers and the ilk (showing that I'm not, at least, utterly alone in my intuition to include the expression in modern usage). The majority of the 32 pages described variants of a folk song entitled "Jesus, Jesus, Rest your Head," which one page suggested as having originated in Southern Appalachia.
A quick foray into Wikipedia suggested that German Moravians constituted a significant chunk of the populace in Appalachia, and the South, in particular, was peopled by a hodge-podge of descendants of these German-speakers and Scotch-Irish folk.
My working hypothesis is that the German-speaking peoples of Appalachia led to the inclusion of "hin" in a folk song (and perhaps the Scotch-Irish contributed the "yon"?). I spent a part of my childhood in Virginia (in a suburb of DC--not in Appalachia), so I suppose I may have come across the expression honestly. It may be more likely, however, that convergent evolution is at work here, and that a jumbled German-English patois led both the Applachians and myself to independently coin an expression born of both languages.
My questions to you: Are any of you folks familiar with this expression? If so, what are its likely origins? Is it still being actively used anywhere?
Cheers, and Happy New Year,
Brian
) He probably did pick it up from local songs, though. One of the sites had him singing, and I was reminded of another, perhaps not quite so well known, Kentucky folk singer: Jean Ritchie, who also sings (some) in a high-pitched unaccompanied voice, and who also felt it was important to preserve mountain music.