[Ads-l] Jigaboo (1910) Gigaboo (1900) Zigaboo (1896) Ji-ji-boo J. O'Shea (1909)

Mon Sep 12 00:09:38 UTC 2022

This cite seems relevant. Where the "bou" comes from, I can't say. This is
the final stanza of a minstrel song called "Who Dare?"

1845_The Popular National Songster and Lucy Neal and Dan Tucker's Delight_
(Phila.: John B. Perry) 156 [HathiTrust]:

Go down to momo [sic] Dinah's,
  Why yu tink we do ah!
We play upon de banjo,
  And dance a jig a bou, ah!

JL

On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 1:26 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> In March 2007, there were two threads here, one about “Jigaboo Man 1911”
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2007-March/068492.html
>
> and another about “Fiji Zigaboo,” which was first mentioned near the end
> of the Jigaboo man thread.
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2007-March/068572.html
>
> There was a certain amount of confusion caused by some early uses of
> “Jigaboo” that were different from the well known meaning (more like
> “bugaboo”), and speculation about how the word eventually became associated
> with black people.  I think I’ve found some of the missing pieces.
>
> Both Gigaboo and Zigaboo pre-date the earliest uses of “Jigaboo” – but
> with different meanings.
>
> “Zigaboo” dates to at least 1896, as the name of some sort f fraternal
> organization, but I have only found two references to it.
>
> Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln), January 31, 1896, page 8. “Several
> members of the ‘Zigaboo’ society and their ladies were in Lincoln last
> evening and attended the rendition of ‘Wang’ at the Funke”
>
> “Gigaboo,” in the sense of a large monster – a Giant Bugaboo, perhaps,
> dates to 1900, in the book, A New Wonderland, by L. Frank Baum, who
> published The Wizard of Oz that same year.  A New Wonderland was rereleased
> in 1903, with a different title, some new content, and the place
> “Wonderland” renamed as the Valley of Mo, but still had the Gigaboo.
> There’s no guide to pronunciation, but I surmise it would generally have
> been understood as “jigaboo.”
>
> A version of the book, entitled The Surprising Adventures of the Magical
> Monarch of Mo and His People, reprinted in 1968 with a forward by Martin
> Gardener is available for checkout on OpenLibrary.org and Archive.org.
>
> From that book, page 110.  “In one of the great hollows formed by the rock
> candy lived a monstrous Gigaboo, completely shut in by the walls of its
> cavern.  It had been growing and growing for so many years that it had
> attained an enormous size . . . . Its body was round, like that of a
> turtle, and on its back was a thick shell.”
>
> It should be noted that a variant of “bugaboo” spelled “bigaboo” was
> common, if not frequent, during the same period.
>
> Neither “Zigaboo” nor “Gigaboo” appear in print often before 1910.  I
> believe that both “Zigaboo” and “Jigaboo” after 1909 were influenced by the
> song, “Ji-ji-boo J. O’Shea,” which had its premier in 1909 in the show
> “Midnight Sons,” and that the association of both of those words with black
> people was derived from the story told in that song, and representations of
> it on stage.
>
> Some of the early uses of “Jigaboo,” as in the song “Jigaboo Man”
> mentioned in the 2007 ADS-L thread, were used to mean a sort of bugaboo –
> or boogie man, influenced by songs like the “Yama Yama Man” and similar
> songs of the same period, and consistent with prior use of Gigaboo and
> bigaboo.
>
> The earliest such use I’ve seen is from 1910, but not related to a song by
> that name.  Centralia Fireside Guard (Centralia, Missouri), November 4,
> 1910, page 4. “Whenever Columbia gets after an appropriation or a levy or
> anythi8ng to help her material prosperity or that of the school which wags
> the old town, she begins to bawl about the inferiority of the present
> things or conditions.  They try to scare us with the ‘Jigaboo Man’ into a
> fit and when we ‘come out of it’ we wonder how it all happened.”
>
> As for the song, full title, “Rings on her Fingers, or Mumbo Jumbo
> Ji-ji-boo J. O’Shea,” it tells the story of an Irishman stranded on an East
> Indies island who is made the chief nabob of the island.  An advertisement
> for a recording of the song shows someone wearing a grass skirt, a feather
> in their hair, a headband, giant hoop earring, bands on the upper arm, an
> ankle bracelet, bare feet, and holding a giant club.  Presumably those
> characters were played on stage in blackface, and perhaps more like an
> African tribe than one in the East Indies.
>
> Some uses of Jigaboo and Zigaboo simply relate back to the name of the
> song.  In 1914, an amateur baseball player with the last name Mayo was
> referred to as “Zigaboo” Mayo (rhymes with Ji-ji-boo J. O’).  IN 1922, a
> pitcher for the San Francisco Seals with the last name O’Shea was known as
> “Patrick Jumbo Jigaboo Jay O’Shea.”
>
> Some uses related to a remote location, like the East Indies isle where
> Ji-Ji-boo J O’Shea lived.  In 1914, the left field bleachers at a baseball
> park in Memphis was referred to as “Zigaboo land,” which is unexplained.
> But the expression “out in left field” derives from a sense of its being
> remote, so it could mean that here.  It might also refer to segregated
> seating, but that is not clear either.  The Commercial Appeal, May 25,
> 1914, page 9; Commercial Appeal, June 29, page 12.
>
> In 1915, a syndicated comic strip, Lord Longbow, used “Zigaboo” as the
> name of an island with dark-skinned islanders.  In the first panel, it is
> spelled “Zizaboo Island,” but in the last panel, it refers to “the Chief
> Zigaboo” (drawn with dark skin).  In 1924, in the comic strip noted in the
> 2007 threads, a woman refers to someone as “homely as a Fiji Zigaboo,”
> consistent with “Zigaboo” being related to a tropical island.
>
> In 1914, a comedy team of Claude Durkee & Billy Dayton appeared in a
> “Double Dutch Comedy” entitled, “The King of Gigaboo.”  Hutchinson News
> (Hutchinson, Kansas), January 9, 1914, page 8.  I found only one reference
> to that act, and no descriptions of the plot, but it seems plausible that
> it could have been about the King of some remote island.
>
> The earliest example I’ve seen of either jigaboo or zigaboo used to refer
> unambiguously to a black person appeared in 1917, in poem first published
> in Memphis, and which was picked up and reprinted widely in Kansas and
> Oklahoma about six months later.  The poem ridicules a black soldier who
> enlisted for the infantry, but has many reasons to avoid the Navy, Air
> Corps, Artillery and the Cavalry.
>
> “The Place to Serve. Sam Green is a regular soldier man, Of African
> descent; The world is bright when Sam can fight With a Zigaboo regiment.”
> Commercial Appeal (Memphis), July 8, 1917, page 5.
>
> The earliest, apparent, “Jigaboo” I’ve seen in that sense is from 1921.
> New Castle Herald (Pennsylvania), August 12, 1921, page 4. “How come?
> Jigaboo slashed so requires 52 stitches to close wounds, said he was ‘only
> foolin’.’ What’s his idea of a real good time?”
>
> Beginning in 1922, and every year through at least 1927, the all-black
> comedy revue headed by Garland Howard and “Speedy” Smith performed a skit
> in which the main characters were transported in a dream to a place called
> “Zigaboo Land,” with beautiful women, cannibals and a jealous “King
> Zigaboo.”  In 1925, their company would become the first all-black act in
> decades to sign a contract with the Columbia Burlesque Circuit, which gave
> them more and better bookings in bigger cities and theaters.
>
> The Boston Globe, October 31, 1922, page 6.  “The second act is much
> better than the first, and shows the adventures of Jack Stovall (Speedy
> Smith) and Hot Stuff Jackson (Garland Howard) on the inhospitable island of
> Zigaboo.  The dusky beauties who ‘shake a wicked hat stack’ vamp poor
> Stovall until he falls into the clutches of the cannibals and is sentenced
> to die by King Zigaboo (Sam Cook).”
>
>
>
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>
>
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