AUSSIEISMS

SEND HER DOWN WHO-IE?

FREDERICK LUDOWYK

When sensible people (such as I) become bored with the snailishness of test cricket (and the pace of much of this game can make a snail’s arduous sojourn from Osmanthus fragransto cuttings of rare roses but a metre away seem like the frenetic flight of a Fury), they usually yearn to cause a bit of miching mallecho and mayhem. Thereupon they pray to Hughie, the God of Celestial Effluence, in the hallowed formula Send her down, Hughie!—and the genial God generally obliges. Whereupon the rains they rain and the papers thereafter carry satisfying headlines such as PLAY WASHED OUT AGAIN.

The phrase Send her (or it) down Hughie! (or Huey!) is a prayer to our uniquely Aussie Rain God to send down rain a-plenty, and that prayer has been prayed, it seems, for a very long time. In 1922, for instance, the Bulletinreported: ‘At the end of the dry, when the first few showers fall, "Send it down, Hughie!" is the heartfelt exclamation of every eager bush-watcher’. The ‘she’ variation first appears in Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Roaring Nineties (1946): ‘Miners and prospectors would turn out and yell to a dull, dirty sky clouded with red dust: "Send her down! Send her down, Hughie!".’ By 1981 the phrase had been taken up, with a slight variation, by surfers, and this time the appeal to the weather God is for him to send down truly awesome waves: ‘Incoming waves may be assessed, and sometimes the ancient cry will rise during a lull: "Send ’em up Huey!" Meaning: push some waves in’ (National Times,Sydney, 20 December). In surfing circles, Huey is often referred to without the Send ’em up tag-phrase: ‘Rabbit felt inclined to find out what was happening. He then broke out the old mobile and engaged in the task of communicating to Huey. "What’s going on?" he was heard saying here. "I asked for the swell to hit today, mate, not tomorrow. And I want it to be six foot and no less." Huey was quick to respond and sure enough by the arvo the six-footers were pumping through’ (Tracks,August 1995). Or, more domestically: ‘Most surfers entertain the concept of having a special relationship with Huey’s missus, Ma Nature’ (Tracks,February 1994).

Who is Hughie or Huey, this recipient of fervent prayer for rain since very early in this declining century or even late in the last? Interestingly, the earliest written record of the phrase also offers an etymology. It occurs in the Bulletinin 1912:

Rethe shearer’s ‘Send it down, Hughie!’ ... when needed rain is threatening. I first heard the expression in Narrandera (NSW). ... I believe that it originated in that district, by reason of a Mr Huie ... an amateur meteorologist, who had luck in prophesying rain. ... Hence, Send it down Huie’. This has all the signs of popular etymology of the folksy, word-of-mouth kind which can claim without a shred of evidence that the very Aussie neenish tart, for instance, was the invention of a Ruby Neenish at Grong Grong (NSW) in 1913 when she happened to run short of cocoa to ice her cakes for a shower tea. The eponymous amateur meteorologist, Mr Huie, it seems to me, is as much a stray wisp of watery vapour from Nephelokokkugia,better known as Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, as is the cocoa-improvident Ruby Neenish.

One etymology proposed for the Australian idiom Send her down, Hughie! is not just vaporous, it is clearly wrong. This etymology is contained in the claim that the Aussie Hughie derives from the Iroquois helicopter gunships used by the Americans in the Vietnam war, manufactured by the Hughes Corporation, and given the model number HU II (Helicopter Utility series 2). This explanation was offered in a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald,28 September 1995: ‘The ground-based radio operators after giving enemy positions would say "Send ’em down, Huey" [i.e. send down the bombs]. The idiom was later adopted by the Australians and at home used by surfers referring to the sun’s rays’. Oh come! Bombs and rays of sunshine are but moonshine as far as Hughie is concerned. He is nothing if not a wateryGod. The writer adds: ‘I have no idea how the Yanks picked up the phrase, but it was very popular and most common’. Unfortunately for the attempt to Yankify our home-grown Hughie, he was proving his Australian identity and his watery influence in Oz at least as early as 1912—long before the Vietnam war and bomb-burdened HU IIs rained fire from the skies.

Many of the popular etymologies are made of sterner stuff, stuff of a classical kind. There is a unit on traditional grammar taught at the Australian National University. At a particular stage in this course, students learn that the classical Greek for ‘it is raining’ is huei. Some of them—budding etymologists all—get in touch with the Dictionary Centre, exclaiming ‘Eureka!’(or, rather, ‘Hêurêkamen!’—‘we have discovered the dinkum origin of Hughie. The mystery is solved. Hughie is obviously an ancient Greek God whose name means "It is raining". He’s not an Aussie at all.’

Sigh!Those shearers and drovers, those miners and farmers, all invoking Hughie down the years, they were all classical scholars (or perhaps they were doing a correspondence course on traditional grammar from the ANU back in 1912). ‘Send her down Hughie!’ the droughthy cockies cry. And then, but moments later, their faces wet with tears and rain, they raise the alleluiatic chorus to the skies: ‘Ah!—huei, huei.’

Other versions of the classical origin have it that Hughie is either a corruption of Jupiter(pronounced YOU-pitter) Pluvius,the God of rain (you is almost Hugh, get it?), or a corruption of Zeus—with the typically Australian hypocoristic -y ending producing a Send ’em down Juie! (YOO-ie) or Zeuy! which, in process of bucolic time, was corrupted to Send ’em down Hughie! Lord love a duck (or even a bedrenched baskas—an ancient Greek ‘duck’ to you)! What’s with these Zyoo-eys and Yoo-eys and huei ‘it rains’ that we should be so bothersomely beset with them?

In Aristophanes’ satiric comedy Nephelai(The Clouds).the philosopher Socrates and the elderly hempen homespun Strepsiades are involved in a profound theological disputation. Socrates stoutly asserts that God is but an imaginary conceit. The Clouds, he avers, are the only deities there are. The old rustic is shocked. ‘No God?’he cries. ‘If that is so, who makes the rain come down? Hah! Answer me that, if you can!’ ‘Why, the Clouds, of course,’replies the philosopher urbanely, no whit feezed or fazed. ‘The proof is watertight. Have you ever seen rain falling anywhere when therewasn’t a Cloud in the sky? How is it that God is unable to produce rain in clear weather when the Clouds have all gone walkabout?’[I append the original for those who read classical Greek, since my translation is, perhaps unwarrantably, loose: "phere pou gar pôpot’ aneu Nephelôn huont’ êdê tetheasai;/kaitoi chrên aithrias huein auton, tautas d’apodêmein" (lines 370-71).] ‘Blow me!’ exclaims the rustic, scratching his head on hearing this weighty proof. ‘And here was me thinking orl the time that it was bloody obvious that rain was nowt but God pissing through a sieve!’ ["kaitoi proteron ton Di alêthôs ôimên dia koskinou ourein" (line 373)]. Me, I’m more inclined to believe that when it rains it really is God pissing through a sieve (a whimsically Goddish thing to do) than that Zeuswas Australianised into Zeuyor that Jupiterwas Australianised into Joeyand then that either was or both were corrupted into Hughie.

A pish and a tush for your Greek Gods! There are proponents of the theory that Hughie is a corruption of Yahweh, the Hebrew name of God in the Bible (we’re back to the You-Hugh slide, it seems). Then there are those, followers of the nomenclatural practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who argue that Hughie is a corruption of Jehovah. And Jehovah and Jove are awfully close in sound, are they not? (This is a non sequitur no less sequential than the Zeuy—Hughieetc. slides.) For those not impressed by Jehovah there is always Yowie. Who is Yowie? Peter McCormack, in his delightful book Q&A: Questions and answers on anything and everything(ABC Books, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1993) tells us—and (tongue in cheek) gives us other possible etymons of Hughie as well:

The origin of Hughie is uncertain, although several possible explanations have emerged. One is that it derived from the saying ‘Send it down, Yowie’. Yowie is an Aboriginal word for thunder. Another is that it could be a humorous invocation to the former government meteorologist, Hughie Watt. And then there was the early Bendigo political figure, Hughie McColl, an ardent campaigner for water conservation. There was also the celebrated cricketer Hugh Trumble, whose fast bowling instigated cries from the crowd of ‘Send ’er down, Hughie—wooden legs are cheap. (p. 90) Peter McCormack throws in Yahweh for good measure and St Hugh of Wessex as a bonus: ‘Hugh was a Catholic bishop in Wessex in the sixth or seventh century. He is reputed to have had great success with the weather. When he died, the peasants prayed to Saint Hugh for rain’ (p. 90). I can say this, at least, for what it is worth—St Hugh’s ability to make it pour (assuming that he did in fact exist and so was able to do a bit of pouring) is attested in Thomas Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s Holiday(1600).

A few years ago we received a letter from a Tasmanian now living in Queensland. Part of the letter reads:

Queenslanders say some funny things. They sick their dog onto something. In Tasmania we skidge ’em. They do something special on the weekend. We did it at the weekend. They get a ding in the car when they hit a roo, we got a dent. And they don’t beep the horn, they barp it. Barp?! Is that a word? And they don’t say Send her down, Hughie when they want more rain. They say Send her down, David. They’re a funny mob, these Queenslanders. Now I dare make no comments about Queenslanders (David forsooth! What do they think this is? Bushweek?), but this is the first (and only) evidence we have come across of the formulation Send her down, David! being used in Australia.

It is certainly used in Pommyland. E. Fraser and J. Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words and Phrases(1925) give Send it down David! (or Davy!), indicating ‘a soldiers’ greeting to a shower of rain likely to postpone a parade’. J. Brophy and E. Partridge Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914?1918(1930) report: ‘The Biblical David, for some unknown reason, was held responsible for rainfall, and drenched, shivering troops would apostrophize the dripping skies—Send it down, David, send it down!’ (p. 195). In his A Dictionary of Catch Phrases(1977), however, Eric Partridge has changed his mind about the identity of this David whom the pommy Tommies invoke:

Send it down, David (with variant Davy lad)! The variant belongs to the Regular Army; and the basic send it down, Davidis often intensified by the addition of a repetitive send it down:late C19?20. In the army, esp. during WWI, it was used to implore David, the Welsh patron saint, to send a preferably very heavy shower, notably when it might cause a parade to be postponed or cancelled. Parts of Wales have a notoriously wet climate: and, what is more, Wales is ‘the land of Leeks'(leaks). There is, of course, a further association between St David and leeks. Shakespeare, for instance, describes the tradition of Welsh people wearing leeks on St David’s day as ‘an ancient Tradition began vppon an honourable respect, and worne as a memorable Trophee’ (Henry the Fifth,V. i. 64).

Is it possible that the Australian prayer is a copycat variant of the British prayer? The odd feature of the British prayer is that the role of David as a weather god or wetting saint is not part of his curriculum vitae—indeed, his rainy role appears to rely solely on the appalling leek/leak pun. And why should Australians have varied ‘David’ with the now even more obscure ‘Hughie’? It seems much more likely to me that the Australian idiom is the original and that the pommy one is the copy. Send it down, Hughie! existed well before the First World War in Australia (S.J. Baker The Australian Language(1966) notes that ‘It has been in Australian use since the beginning of this century’). Send it down, David! arises in British English during the First World War. It is feasible to my mind that British soldiers, faced by our boys with the even-by-then obscure Australian Hughie (‘Send her down Who-ey, choom?) and the further obscurity of that her, wittily replaced the impenetrable Hughie with their home-grown leaky David, picking out the one salient fact that they could understand about our God—he leaks.

In 1991 a letter-writer to the surfing magazine Tracksasked ‘what "Huey" really means or what people believe he is’. The editor responded:

All I can say is that, yes, Huey is THE god of the waves. His legend can ONLY be passed on orally. The last person who even thought about putting it into print died in an unspeakably horrible way. If you are destined to learn his legend, you will.—Ed. Well, I am warned. But I shall persist in trying to ‘learn his legend’ and if I do I shall certainly put it into print. Hughie, my friend, I shall blow away your cloud-cover yet. But please be up above when test cricket next looms. Then send her down hard, my nebulous Hughie!—
But wait till I’ve upped mon parapluie. Lord, what diuretic doggerel! I must be deviating into dotage.

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