"Bob's your uncle" antedating (Glaswegian?)

[Stephen Goranson]

Previously in "Bob's your uncle" news (below), a book review complained of a
book that used language such as "Bob's your uncle." I now have the 1932 book.
According to the unpaginated Acknowledgment the bulk of the book originally
appeared in the Glasgow "Evening Times" and other portions in the Glasgow
"Evening News" and "Daily Record and Mail" and the "Scottish Field." The book
concludes (319-323) with Gaelic "Words and Phrases."

[The phrase is often classed as Cockney, e.g, in Cockney, past and present: a
short history of the dialect of London,  By William Matthews (1938) 114, 154.]

Page 3
...I scouted through the streets of the Highland capital endeavouring to
overhear at least one word of that most superlative English which the
perpetrators of guide-books would have us believe is the natural speech of
every native-born Clach-na-Cuddenite.
Natural speech their granny! I yon is English they talk in Inverness,
then what
we Glaswegians use is an archaic form of Swahili--and not Irish, as we have
always been told.

Page 42
[By good luck, rapidly realised] I chanced upon a cave that must have been the
local smiddy....
Bob's your uncle! In two jiffs I had my peter off, my tommy unpacked and my
billy filled. Next, setting a fire to some twigs....

Page 125
[more good luck] ...before the fireplace, I found two doors which some vagrant
hand had leant against each other: and under this was a big pile of tinder-dry
bracken.
Bob's your aunt! Beenie's your uncle! Was ever wander served by so steady a
star?....

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson


1937 Bob's your uncle in Partridge (and OED).
1937 Bobs your uncle in archive.
1938 Bob's yer uncle in archive.

The Observer [London]. Jun 19, 1932, page 7, col. 5.
Just Out
Some Very New Books
....
A strident liveliness spoils "The Travels of Tramp-Royal" (Blackwood...) for
readers not temperamentally akin to a writer who exclaims "Bob's your uncle!"
and "Aha says I." It tells of a tramp through some of the wildest and
loveliest
parts of Scotland, "with a peter full of everything on my back and a
billy full
of nothing on my hip." Mr. Matt Marshall [author]....

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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