The phrase hip, hip, hurrah! came into fashion sometime between
1805 and 1811. The phrase combined a
long-standing tradition of giving “three cheers” with the
interjection, hip, hip, that was in
common use in the 1700s, as a greeting or call to get someone’s attention. The phrase appeared too early to have been
derived from the German, anti-Semitic rallying cry, Hep, Hep, from the so-called Hep, Hep riots of 1819, as some suggest.
The phrase also appeared too recently to have originated during the Crusades
of the middle-ages, as others suggest.
Hip, hip, hurrah quickly became deeply ingrained in the pop-culture
and language; so much so, that within just a few years, its fairly recent,
innocent origins were already lost to history.
In its place, a darker, more sinister version of its origins took root. Despite early skepticism of the sinister,
false etymology, and despite the lack of any real proof to support the story,
the dark version persists.
The Origins of the False Origin Story
The false origin story of hip, hip, hurrah! dates to at least
1832, at a time when hip, hip, hurrah!
was barely twenty years old, and within thirteen years of the anti-Semitic
violence in Germanythat spawned the phrase, hep,
hep:
Hip, Hip, Hurra! – During the
stirring times of the Crusades, the chivalry of Europe was excited to arms by
the inflammatory appeals of the well-known Peter the Hermit. While preaching the Crusade, this furious
zealot was accustomed to exhibit a banner emblazoned with the following
letters, H.E.P., the initials of the Latin words, “Hierosolyma Est Perdita,”
Jerusalem is destroyed. The people in
some of the countries which he visited, not being acquainted with the Latin,
read and pronounced the inscription as if one word – Hep. The followers of the Hermit were accustomed,
whenever an unfortunate Jew appeared in the streets, to raise the cry, “Hep,
hep, hurra,” to hunt him down, and flash upon the defenceless Israelite their
maiden swords, before they essayed their temper with the scimetar of the
Saracen. – Tatler.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Volume 19,
London, J. Limbird, 1832, page 208.
The story is horrifying,
dramatic, ancient, and purports to be connected to events of historic
importance and, to a certain kind of person, perhaps heroic. It has the ring of
truth and is presented as uncontested historic fact. Perhaps that is precisely why the story
proved so seductive to later etymologists and why the story persists to this
day.
But this description, written in 1832,
was not based on ancient documents from the time of the Crusades, it was based on a story about the Crusades that first circulated in 1819,
during the time of the Hep, Hep riots.
The main difference between the 1832 version and the 1819 version is the
addition of the word, hurrah, and the substitution
of the English, hip, hip, for the
original German, Hep, Hep. Adding to the confusion, is the fact that the
original German story may itself have been a fabrication. Several German-language sources from the early and
mid-nineteenth century suggest that the purported origin of Hep, from H.E.P.,
is just a myth.
Contemporary Description of the Hep, Hep - 1819
Although the use of “hep, hep”
during pre-Crusades violence against Jews in the 1090s is up for debate, there
is no doubt that anti-Jewish mobs chanted the phrase during widespread violence
against Jews in Germany in 1819. In
August of 1819, the New Times newspaper
in England published a letter from Frankfurt, Germany, describing the spread of
the violence. Part of the letter explains a purported etymology of the phrase, hep, hep, that was used during the attacks:[i]
The Hep! Hep! Which was the
watchword of the rioters in the late attacks on the Jews, according to old
chronicles had the following origin: - In the year 1097, a party of crusaders,
headed by Peter Gansfleish and Conrad von Leiningen, went about recruiting for
followers with colours, on which were inscribed the first letters of the words,
Hierosolyma est perdita (Jerusalem is lost), H. E. P. This swarm, however, never proceeded to the
Holy Land, but remained in Germany, where they everywhere persecuted and
murdered the Jews, and more particularly along the Rhine. Wherever this band came up with their
colours, the people exclaimed Hep! Hep! And fell upon the Jews.
The Jewish Expositor, and Friend of Israel, volume 4, 1819,
November, page 418 (citing the New Times,
August 28, 1819.
The letter cites unnamed “old chronicles,” to support the stated origin of Hep Hep, so it is difficult to verify the claims. But the word, hurrah, is missing completely. The article from 1832, which appears to be a retelling of the story related in the letter of 1819, seems to have added the word hurrah without reason.
Dispute Among German-language Scholars
With regards to Hep, Hep, I have not found any pre-1819 source that supports the suggestion that hep, hep, or H.E.P., for that matter, were used during the Crusades. My personal take on the hep, hep/H.E.P. connection is that it smacks of a grandiose, “heroic” cover-story, calculated to cloak their violent acts in a glow of religiosity.
Several German scholars from the
mid-nineteenth century challenged the claims of a connection between hep, hep and H.E.P. An entry in a general encyclopedia of the
arts and sciences stated:
HEP – HEP an insult, used during the
recent, tumultuous attacks against Jews; it first occurred in August, 1819, in
Wuerzburg, and soon afterward in Frankfurt a. M. and other locations,
particularly in Southern Germany. The
suggestion that the word had supposedly been used during the persecution of the
Jews in the Middle-Ages is unsubstantiated; and the analysis that Hep is
derived from Hierosolyma est perdita, of which the initials form the strange
word, is mistaken. Apparently, Hep means
goat in a rural dialect, and was used derisively to characterize the bearded
Jews. But it is still extraordinary that
this insult crossed the borders of our own Fatherland to incite trouble in
other places such as Copenhagen. Several
governments, including, for example, the Prussian government, have expressly
and seriously forbidden the use of the word. (A. G. Hoffmann.)
J. S. Ersch und J. G. Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopaedie der Wissenschaften und Kuenste, second
section H-N, part 5, Heinrich – Hequaesi, Leipzig, Johann Friederich Steditsch, 1829, page 361.
A later writer agreed that Hep
was not derived from H.E.P, but offered a different explanation:
The sound, huep, or hup, from heben [(lift or lift up)] is used today
to drive horses. The standard call of, “hep, hep!” is nothing other than a form
of the same root-word heben, and the
suggestion that it came from the abbreviation H.e.p., i.e. Hierosolyma est
perdita, is generally viewed today as an absurd and banal myth. The elliptical chant basically says: get out
today or you’ll never get away.
Josua Eiselein, Die Reimhaften, anklingenden und
ablautartigen formeln der hochdeutschen Sprache in alter und neuer Zeit,
Gesammelt und erlauetert von Professor Eiselein, Bellevue, bei Constanz, F.
Fleischer, 1841, pages 15-16. In
English, the phrases, “get up” or “giddy-up,” seem to be close analogies.
But despite the best efforts of
certain scholars to dispel the rumor, the story persisted. An entry from a German dictionary of idioms
and sayings, published in 1880, reads:
Hep, Hep. This taunt and insult, which is still often heard
today, and which stems from the time of the bloody persecution of Jews in the
Middle-Ages, is formed from the initials of the Latin sentence: Hierosolyma est
perdita (i.e. Jerusalem is lost), which could be read on the banners of many of
the Crusaders. (Moltke, Sprachwort, IX, 328).[ii]
Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander, Deutsches Sprichwoerter-Lexikon, Ein
Hausschatz fuer das deutsche Volk, Volume 5 Weib-Zwug. with Additions and
Addenda, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1880, column 1425 (Additions and Addenda).
Dispute Among English-language Scholars
During the same period in which
German scholars debated whether hep, hep
was derived from H.E.P., English-speaking scholars similarly debated whether hip, hip, hurrah! was derived from the
same source. As was the case in Germany,
the question was asked, analyzed, dismissed by many, and yet ultimately persisted,
despite the lack of actual, historical support.
The false etymology debate in English was further complicated by the
extension of the false German etymology (for hep, hep) to the entire phrase, hip,
hip, hurrah!, and all of its constituent parts, despite the fact that hurrah!, or its German equivalent, is
completely absent from the debate in the source-language of the story.
In 1852, a reader’s question
about the origin of hip, hip, hurrah!,
appeared in, Notes and Queries: a Medium
of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists,
Etc. The magazine Notes and Queries took the form of a kind
of proto-online forum. Readers posted queries
on any subject, and other readers provided answers that appeared in subsequent
issues. Since the magazine had a fairly
erudite readership, the questions and answers resulted in a generally, although
not exclusively, high-level of discussion.
Debates could last months or years, as replies, subsequent questions and
follow-up replies were published. In
1852, the first in a series of queries and replies on the subject of the
etymology of hip, hip, hurrah!
appeared. The question was prompted by a
version of the purported hip, hip, hurrah
etymology that had been published in The
Mirror twenty years earlier:
“Hip, hip, hurrah!” – What was the
origin of this bacchanalian exclamation, and what does it mean? I make the
inquiry, although I annex an attempt to define it, which was cut from the
columns of the Edinburgh Scotsman newspaper some years ago: –
“It is said that ‘Hip, hip, hurrah!’
originated in the Crusades, it being a corruption of H.E.P., the initials of ‘Hierosolyma est perdita” (Jerusalem is
lost!), the motto on the banner of Peter the Hermit, whose followers hunted the
Jews down with the cry of ‘Hip, hip, hurrah!’”
I have never read elsewhere of such
a motto being upon the standards of the first Crusaders. Had they any other motto than Dieu le volt? R. S. F., Perth.
Notes and Queries, Volume 6, Number 142, July 17, 1852, page 54.
The question prompted a series of
replies over the next couple of years.
Most of the responses tended to doubt the reputed origin of the phrase:
“Hip,
Hip, Hurrah!” (Vol. vii, pp. 595, 633). – The reply suggested by your
correspondent R. S. F., that the above exclamation originated in the Crusades,
and is a corruption of the initial letters of “Hierosolyma est perdita,” never
appeared to me to be very apposite.
Notes and Queries, Volume 8, 1853, page 88. That same writer, however, offered their own
fantastical suggestion; namely that the phrase was based on a line in an old
drinking song, “hang up all the hep drinkers.”
A later response pointed out that the actual lyrics were, “hang up all
the hop drinkers,” and was intended as a critique of drinking beer instead of
spirits.
The most thorough and thoughtful
response came from the well-known and respected Irish politician, traveler and
member of the Royal Society, James Emerson Tennent:
As to hip, hip! I fear it must remain
questionable, whether it be not a mere fanciful conjecture to resolve it into
the initials of the war-cry of the Crusaders, “Hierosolyma est perdita!” The authorities, however, seem to
establish that it should be written “hep”
instead of hip.
As to hurrah! if
I be correct in my idea of it parentage, there are few words still in use which
can boast such a remote and widely extended prevalence. It is one of those interjections in which
sound so echoes sense that men seem to have adopted it almost
instinctively. In India and Ceylon, the
Mahouts and attendants of the baggage-elephants cheer them on by perpetual
repetitions of ur-re, ur-re! The Arabs and camel-drivers in Turkey, Palestine,
and Egyt encourage their animals to speed by shouting ar-re, ar-re! The Moors seem to have carried the custom
with them into Spain, where the mules and horses are still driven with the
cries of arre (whence the muleteers derive their Spanish appellation of arrieros). In France, the sportsman excites the hound by
shouts of hare, hare! And the waggoner turns his horses by his voice, and the
use of the word hurhaut! In Germany,
according to Johnson (in verbo Hurry), “Hurs was a word used by the old Germans
in urging their horses to speed.” And to the present day, the herdsmen in
Ireland, and parts of Scotland, drive their cattle with shouts of hurrish,
hurrish! In the latter country, in fact, to hurry, or to harry, is the popular
term descriptive of the predatory habits of the border reivers in plundering
and “driving the cattle” of the lowlanders.
The sound is so
expressive of excitement and energy, that it seems to have been adopted in all
nations as a stimulant in times of commotion; and eventually as a war-cry by
the Russians, the English, and almost every people of Europe. Sir Francis Palgrave, in the passage quoted
from his History of Normandy (“N.&Q.” Vol. viii., p. 20), has described the
custom of the Normans in raising the country by “the cry of haro,” or haron,
upon which all the lieges were bound to join in pursuit of the offender. This clameur de haron is the origin of the
English “hue and cry;” and the word hue itself seems to retain some trace of
the prevailing pedigree. . . .
In like manner,
our English expressions, to hurry, to harry, and harass a flying enemy, are all
instinct with the same impulse, and all traceable to the same root.
Notes and Queries, Volume 8, 1853, page 323.
Despite the doubt expressed by
thoughtful, knowledgeable writers in England and Germany, the story would make
its way into serious, historical works. The
purported relationship between H.E.P.
and Hip, Hip, Hurrah is mentioned,
for example, in a footnote in a book about an anti-heretical crusade in Italy
during the early fourteenth century. A
Historical Memoir of fra Dolcino and His Times (London, 1853).
The story would also find its way
into books meant for a more general audience.
The story appeared in a book of etiquette published in 1860. The Perfect Gentleman; or, Etiquette and
Eloquence (New York, Dick & Fitzgerald, 1860) included a section with “model
speeches for all occasions, with directions on how to deliver them” and “500
toasts and sentiments for everybody, and their proper mode of introduction.” The story of the origin of hip, hip, hurrah! gets a brief mention
in a section about the etiquette of drinking at the dinner table. The same story was also included in Dick’s
Book of Toasts (Dick & Fitzgerald, 1883), in a section about the origin of
toasts.
I do not know how popular those books were, but they were
published in New York, by a publishing house that appears to have published
hundreds of titles aimed at a broad audience. A brief look at several of their
other titles from the same period suggests that their publications targeted a mass audience; they were not a literary publisher with limited
appeal: What Shall We Do To-Night? Or,
Social Amusements for Evening Parties (1873); Dick’s Recitations and Readings (1876); Snaffles’ Dog (1879); The Art
of Dressing Well (1870); The
Vegetable Garden, a Complete Guide to the Cultivation of Vegetables (1877).
Conclusion
The phrase, hep, hep, used by anti-Jewish rioters in 1819 appears to have been a
common phrase for driving horses or cattle, not derived from the initials
H.E.P., which purportedly appeared on banners carried during the First Crusade. If H.E.P. was actually used during the First
Crusade, none of the writers who suggest it as the origin of hep, hep have cited any verifiable
sources or other documentation. The story, itself, sounds more like an attempt
to cast religious legitimacy on their otherwise indefensible persecution of Jewish
people.
Hip, hip, hurrah! is first attested in the early 1800s, long after the Crusades and several years
before the Hep, Hep riots. It is
therefore unlikely that it was derived from a banner carried during the First
Crusade (see my earlier post, Three
Cheers, Hip, Hip, Hurrah and Tom and Jerry). The suggestion that hip, hip, hurrah was derived from the initials H.E.P. and/or the phrase, hep, hep, was based on a misstatement (the addition of hurrah) of an
unsubstantiated story about the origins of the German phrase, hep,
hep; it was not based on an analysis of substantiated historic fact.
I am not a sociologist, or
psychologist, so I cannot easily explain how or why what appears to be a
fabrication, based on a misspelling and rewriting of a German phrase, itself
the subject of an unsubstantiated etymology, became accepted as fact and
continued being repeated for more nearly two-hundred years. I suppose the explanation provided drama,
historical interest, and suggested an association with significant historical
events.
It made good copy – and it was copied well – well into the twenty-first century.
It made good copy – and it was copied well – well into the twenty-first century.
[i] The New Annual Register, or General
Repository of History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1819, London,
Thomas M’Lean, 1820, Principal Occurences, &c., page 133.
[ii]
This entry was borrowed, in its entirety, from Moltke, Deutscher Sprachwort; Zeitschrift fuer Kunde und Kunst der Sprache,
number 229 (volume 9, number 21), November 20, 1875.
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