Yee-ha(w) / "Rebel yell"

[Charles Doyle]

I'd never thought about it before, but are we to suppose that Swift's yahoos are so called because they go around ejaculating "YA-HOO!"?  (Those creatures WERE, after all, rebels of a sort.)

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 06:32:01 -0800
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject: Yee-ha(w) / "Rebel yell"
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>It's the 21st C., so why be surprised, as I was, at the appearance of exclamatory "Yee-ha!" in Australia:  http://walkabout.com.au/tales/Travellerstales00043.shtml . Also:
>
>  2001 Matthew Reilly _Area 7_ (Rpt. N.Y.: St. Martin's, 2002) 175: Beside her, Elvis was yelling, “Yee-ha!” as he rained hell on the 7th Squadron men with the minigun.
>
>  "Yee-ha!" / ji:::: ' ha:::: / is frequently known as "the rebel yell," but 19th C. descriptions of that yell (or those yells), analyzed by Allen Walker Read in _AS_ long ago show that its dominant effect was not "Yee-ha!"
>
>  I grew up in a bluebelly ethos where "whoopee" and "yahoo" and "wahoo" were familiar from movie westerns and the phrase "rebel yell" was used only in history books.
>
>  I first became conscious of "Yee-ha !" in 1974 or ' 75.  Since then it has been yelled everywhere. But when did this popularity begin.  There's a "famous 'Yeehaw!' scene," it sez here, in _Red River_ (1948), but I can't recall whether the yell (prefaced by 'Take 'em to Missouri, Matt!") sounded like "Yeehaw!" or something else.
>
>  A West Indian "yee ha" from 1877 is readily findable through Google Books,  but it seems like nonsense syllables rather than any kind of yell.
>
>  Phonetically it's related to "hee-haw," but there all similarity ends.
>
>  Thoughts?  Early cites ?  Any connection to Yeehaw Junction, Florida?  (Under "yeehaw," OED's earliest is 1977, despite appearances.)
>
>  JL

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