|
|
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 1
stranger
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 1 |
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
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
welcome to the board, Brian!
I am more familiar with "hither and yon", though I have run into hin and yon in the John Jacob Niles carol that you mention. your hypothesis sounds good to me!
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I looked "hin" up in my brick and mortar OED and found only two entries:
A Hebrew measure of capacity, a little over a gallon.
and
The accusative third person singular masculine pronoun, now superseded by the dative him.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
Forms: {alpha}. 1-5 hider, 3-6 hyder, 4 huder, 4-5 hidir, -ur, 5 hydir, -ur, -yr, 4-6 hidder, -ir, hydder, -ir, -yr; 4 hi{th}er, 5-6 hyther, 5- hither. {beta}. 3 hidere, 4-5 hidre. {gamma}. 4-5 heder, -ir(e, -ur, -yr, 6 hedder; 4 he{th}er, 4-5 hethir, 5-7 hether. [OE. hider corresp. to ON. he{edh}ra, Goth. hidrê; f. demonstr. stem hi- (see HE, HERE) + suffix appearing also in L. ci-tr{amac} on this side. Not known in WGer. exc. in OE.; but it has been suggested that OS. herod, OHG. herot, in same sense, are of similar origin. For the later change of d to th ({edh}), cf. note to FATHER.] [emPHAsis added] looks like Murray dropped the ball on WGer. hin! 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
Hither = to here, thither = to there, yonder = over there, yon = short for yonder. English used to make three distinctions for adverbs of place, corresponding to location of the hearer (person in the verbal categorial sense): first person, I/we ~ here, second person, thou/ye/you ~ there, third person, he/she/it/they ~ yonder. Other languages, like Spanish, Latin have preserved the there and yonder distinction.
whither. whence, where
hither, hence, here
thither, thence, there
--, --, yonder
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Welcome, lazlo 'n guest! John Jacob Niles is quite famous around these parts; I tried looking up a biography on him, but got tired before finding one that said whether one or both of his parents were of German descent. (Alex, you want to run across the street and look this up?  ) 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. Anyway--I found this explanation by JJN about how he came to compose a particular song, and thought it priceless: "I Wonder As I Wander grew out of three lines of music sung for me by a girl who called herself Annie Morgan. The place was Murphy, North Carolina,and the time was July, 1933. The Morgan family, revivalists all, were about to be ejected by the police, after having camped in the town square for some little time, coking, washing, hanging their wash from the Confederate monument and generally conducting themselves in such a way as to be classed a public nuisance. Preacher Morgan and his wife pled poverty; they had to hold one more meeting in order to buy enough gas to get out of town. It was then that Annie Morgan came out--a tousled, unwashed blond, and very lovely. She sang the first three lines of the verse of "I Wonder As I Wander". At twenty-five cents a performance, I tried to get her to sing all the song. After eight tries, all of which are carefully recorded in my notes, I had only three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material--and a magnificent idea. With the writing of additional verses and the development of the original melodic material, "I Wonder As I Wander" came into being. I sang it for five years in my concerts before it caught on. Since then, it has been sung by soloists and choral groups wherever the English language is spoken and sung."
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
one of my farvorite JJN's songs is Go 'Way from My Window. good stuff.
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
>ejected by the police, after having camped in the town square for some little time, coking,
Well, that'd usually do it.
BTW, Murphy hasn't changed a bit in the last 70 plus years except it's now the hole in the Bible belt that the tongue of the buckle fits into.
TEd
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
Also, I sorta think that lazlongest comes from Lazarus Long, rather that from lazlo and guest, but that's just an edificated guess on my part.
TEd
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 500
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 500 |
That's what I thunk, too, TEd.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,322
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
0 members (),
585
guests, and
2
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
