Meaning of 'Holler'

Subject: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:07 PM

could someone stateside please explain the meaning of the word in the context of
'Toast to the Woman in the Holler' song by Chuck Brodsky on album Tulips

very good collection of his latest

many thanks

John

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:09 PM

A "holler" refers to a "hollow". A small, secluded valley.

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:11 PM

Not to be confused with the verb "holler" which in some southern US contexts is a particular way to shout across long distances and make yourself understood.

You could easily holler across a holler this way.

SRS

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:13 PM

Or being empty inside: He hollered across the holler holler.

The verb form probably comes for "Hello," as in "He helloed to them."

It's all dialetic.

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:25 PM

Don't forget the holler log!
G

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:38 PM

Thanks all, what kept you!!

Mike, is there a holler' in an urban context?

or would it be the woman who lives at the bottom of the stairwell if in a high rise apartment block?

'heres to the power of song' is the last line of the chorus to this song

thankfully the lyrics come with the package but can also be viewed on Chuck's web site

We brits need a little help with your vernacular.

Much appreciated

john

btw I was familiar with 'shouting' as 'hollering'

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 04:47 PM

"If he hollers I will foller,
for I live not where I love"

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 05:00 PM

Thanks McGrath

Must do better and can and will and now

All the best to you

john

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Barry Finn
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 05:04 PM

"Wish I could holler like a mountain Jack
I'd climb this mountain call my baby back"

I'm proud to be a coal miners daughter
living in a place like Butcher's Holler"

This is a prison hollor; type of song:

"No more my Lord, no more my Lord
Lord, I'll will never turn back no more."

Barry

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 05:13 PM

And then there are field hollers, usually one unique to each family in an area. Used to call to folks out in the fields or just away from home, and not limited to African-Americans.

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 05:19 PM

yeah yeah

we done with the 'shouting'

now for the 'noun' application please.

john will holler next time

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 05:38 PM

In the central Appalachian mountains,(West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia) 'hollers' or (hollows) refer to the narrow, but often long valleys made by the many creeks. They usually end in cul d sacs where the creek comes down off the mountain, and the further up the holler one lives, usually, the more remote one is. I don't know what they call them in the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee or Pennsylvania. In the North Carolina mountains they are called coves instead of hollers.

I think the only way the term would have an urban context would be if a hillbilly who had moved to an urban area for the work in the factories likened a narrow alley or stairwell to a 'holler.'

Janie

Subject: Lyr Add: A TOAST TO THE WOMAN IN THE HOLLER
From: breezy
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 06:26 PM

is it possible the song is about characters who are living in the country as opposed to town?

here is the song

A TOAST TO THE WOMAN IN THE HOLLER

Catherine's boyfriend played saxophone - Catherine wanted a flute
There was one in the window of the music store - that happened to be a real beaut
But Mummy couldn't afford it - this much Catherine knew
Still, she stood there a few minutes dreaming - knowing it wouldn't come true

Christmas time was coming - and Catherine had the blues
Her Mummy asked her what she wanted - Catherine didn't tell the truth
She knew there wasn't the money - not even for one to rent
The only thing Catherine really wanted - was to play an instrument

Catherine cried for a month in her bedroom - when she had to quit the school band
The woman who lived in the holler - heard about this secondhand
And the goodness gathered within her - and fluttered like butterflies
She in a vision released them - and she watched them take to the skies

And on a very cold night in December - maybe the coldest night of the year
The woman who lives in the holler - cried a few secret tears
For the last few moments of glory - and the glories that had been before
And the times it had been there to rescue her - she set her flute down by the door

People whisper about her - the locals say she's a witch
Though she'd be the first to come help them - if they ended up in a ditch
The candles she lights at her altar - they burn as a gesture of love
The kind they talk about in the churches - yet they know so little of

It was one day just after Christmas - and Catherine wore her new hat
Her mom brought her out to the holler - the woman was there with her cats
Catherine had no idea - but someday maybe she would
That what she would soon be receiving - was being given for a greater good

So here's to the future of music. - and here's to the power of song
And here's a toast to the woman in the holler - for passing these things along

The case was covered with stickers - and words that this woman had scrawled
From the magic places she'd been to - trinkets from her own Mardi Gras
And it all meant nothing to Catherine - it wasn't her story to tell
She'll have her own words and stickers - should she ever fall under the spell

So it's Catherine's turn now to hold her - here's hoping she'll learn how to play
Maybe she'll drop by the holler - to visit this woman some day
Maybe she'll come with her boyfriend - the one who plays saxophone
Maybe they'll play for the woman - a few things they made up on their own

So here's to the sweet gift of music - here's to the power of song
And a toast to the woman in the holler - for passing these things along

______________________________________________________________________

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Azizi
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 06:31 PM

And here's another similar word- "Holla"

The word "Holla" comes from contemporary African American hip-hop/ urban culture. Holla is pronounced HOL-lah. One meaning of 'Holla' is to talk [as it comes from the word "holler" meaning "talk loudly".

In the context of 'talking' holla can mean to 'get ones' rap on' [a new way of saying 'rap'] with the a lady [or a man].

Holla can also mean 'call a person up on the telephone' or otherwise talk with them later.

But "Holla" is also used at the end of a sentence in a call & response type way to show that you really mean what you said. In that context, you are either confirming what you said yourself [thus acting as both the caller and the responder]. Or you are literally or rhetorically asking for affirmation from others of what you said. In that context, if someone responds to you it would be with a word like this: "Yeah"; or "You got that right" or [the dated sayings] "Right on" or "Word!" or "I feel you, man" or -in religious or non-religious contexts- "Amen!".

See these examples from the http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=holla

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 06:31 PM

In this context it is clear to me that the woman lives out in a secluded rural holler, not in a town such as the one Catherine apparently lives in. Wheeling, W. Va., is a good example of a populous burg with genuine dark and lonely hollers not too far away from it.

A

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: katlaughing
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 07:00 PM

I agree, Amos.

Breezy, thanks for posting the lyrics. It sounds like a beautiful song.

Janie, that "cul de sac" out here that would be known as a "box canyon." :-) Maybe it was my dad's Southern ancestors, but we have always used the verb "holler" out here in the Rockies.

Anyone know if it has ANY relation to the Swiss "hollering" across the mtn. valleys via yodeling? Just a thought.

kat

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Louie Roy
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 07:15 PM

Years ago there were women who run a house of ill repute such as Haggard's Hickory Holler Tramp

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST, Eb
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 07:25 PM

There's a fiddle tune called 'Hollow Poplar'. My tongue has always wanted to call it 'Holler Popla".

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From:
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 08:01 PM

That IS a real beaut of a song. Any tune to go with it?

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Azizi
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 08:28 PM

Does 'holler' in this song mean "small, seculed valley" or does it mean something like "hole in the ground"?

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=69650#1213235

Here's one of the verses of that song that includes the word 'holler':

Possum up de gum stump,
Dat raccoon in de holler;
Twis' 'im out, an' git 'im down,
An' I'll gin you a half a dollar

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Azizi
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 08:30 PM

Hmmm. I see that that hyperlink didn't work. Let me try again:

thread.cfm?threadid=69650#1213235

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 08:35 PM

I think the woman in the holler is a actually a bit of a mystic-- in a place with hollers, I think her respectful friends would say she had the second sight. Catherine is a town girl, so the woman in the holler is considered strange. In other words, she's being described by a townie point of view. Cultures living side by side, with ancient holler wisdom seen as witchery?

Anyway, she gives her own rude (probably wooden or reed) flute to the girl, knowing she herself is doing right to pass it and all its power on to this girl who only knows she WANTS it, but trusting Catherine and music itself to let the future unfold through the flute. Knowing with her years and holler wisdom that a woman is a woman and a girl with longing is a girl with longing-- as she herself once was.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: leeneia
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 10:23 PM

Somebody asked if holler is used in the city. Yes. All my life (Midwestern U.S.) I've heard statements such as:

She's always hollering at her kids.

You don't have to holler at me!

If you need some help, give me a holler.

In the last example, hollering is friendly. In the first two, it's not.

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Janie
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 11:02 PM

Kat, I called it a dead-end, but most of the time, you could keep going on foot--scrambling through the rhododendron and the greenbriar, finally climbing up the steep forrested slope to the top of the ridge befor you drop down into the head of another holler.

I'd guess the woman retreated up the holler at some point. Maybe she had left the holler for the wider world--had many adventures with her flute, and then came home and became something of a recluse. Goin' off and seeing the wide world would have given her a bit of a foreign flavor and perhaps lead to suspicion among those who had stayed. Hollers can be places of mystery and magic, places to hide--many a moonshine still could be found way up in the furthest reaches of remote hollers. The ancient Appalachians are low, rugged mountains, full of small communities and coal camps that are pretty isolated and fairly inaccessible, even today.

You can start up a fairly good sized holler, along a major creek or minor river, and then start going up the increasingly smaller branches of tributary creeks and go for miles and miles up hollers that get narrower and narrower. The road will go from 2 lane asphault to one lane, to gravel, to dirt, to rutted mud tracks where only 4 wheel drives can go in the winter or after rain.

Chances are, when you have wended your way back as far into the hills as you can, and followed the smallest tributary creek as far as there is room for a track to run beside it or through it, you will find an old house or shack, a tumbled down barn and downed barbed wire fences. Like as not, there will be an old apple tree or three--maybe a pear tree. Up on the top of the ridge will be an old family graveyard with four or five unreadable stones and a rusted out fence around it. Somebody probably lived there 'til only 30 years ago, and the old man in the cinderblock house that was at the mouth of this furthest holler is a grand-nephew of the people who lived there last.

I would guess hollers (or hollows the further north you get-remember the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow") are called that because those creeks literally hollowed out passages through and around the mountains.

While a holler is a creek valley-valley always suggests some spaciousness to me. When I think of holler, I think narrow, winding, just enough valley floor for the raod that follows the creek, and a line of houses that back right up to the side of the mountain.

Breezy-I'd love to hear that song.

Janie

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 11:52 PM

'Druther be
In some dark holler
Where the sun refuse to shine,
Than ta see you with another
And to know you should be mine...

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: katlaughing
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 11:59 PM

Janie, when are you going to write a book?! That's a beautiful description and pretty close to come of the places I've known nearer the mountains of Colorado than down here in the high desert valley. One could climb out of a box canyon, but it'd be straight up on mostly smooth sandstone, here, while up nearer the mountains it would be more as you describe. I like the idea of them being known as "hollers" because of the hollowing out by the *cricks*.:-)

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST,Diana
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:25 AM

Janie. it sounds like you just described my home.

I live in a Holler. Its narrow, very narrow but its long.
There are several springs that create small creeks, which in turn carve out this land further and further.
They usually dry out in the summer but come right back in the spring.
I can hear the folks who live 5 miles down the main road on a warm summers night. We could talk to each other by just talking a little louder than normal (hollering) from our back porches.

Diana

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST,rangeroger
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 02:20 AM

Up here in the mountains of North Idaho,"hollers"are gulches, and the creeks that formed them are "cricks"

rr

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:42 AM

I am sorry folks, you all have it horribly wrong. The correct explanation is as follows:

He (the man in the song) has just been sleeping with his woman, and being somewhat heavier, when he got up in the morning to make breakfast he left a long narrow indentation - "holler" - in the matress. As he got up, his woman inadvertedly rolled into the holler. Now he is coming back bringing toast for her. That is all. A simple but moving breakfast-after-the-night-before song.

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:18 PM

piss off george Papavgeris

sorry all you guys stateside for that

thanks Amos

I believe I have the idea.

thanks all

yes there is a tune and the chorus is simple , poignant and singable

please buy Tulips by Chuck Brodsky

but take care where you sing Liar Liar

Its a gem

now back to rounders

rounders is a game we invented in the U K for girls and became the game of baseball over with you guys, which realy gives a big insight into your make -up !!

Chuck who? I hear you all say and yet you guys know everything!! but then you are protected from the real world by government propoganda and censorship

Brodsky will lead you out of the darkness

hears a blown kiss to y'all

Tonight we have Harvey Andrews at my club in St Albans U K

Who? look him up

His song 'The Soldier ' was banned a long time ago but has been adopted by the British armed forces and is well known.

peace

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:43 PM

Before telephones came into the Southern Appalachian Mountains, hollerin' was a well respected form of communication. A champion of this actual art-form was Leonard Emanual of North Carolina. There were real competitions between the best of these---sometimes official contests at folk festivals. They resembled yodeling superficially---and often incorporated voice breaks like typical yodels. The falsetto, of course, carried further than the lower pitched tones. Mr Leonard Emanual had a special holler that he called his DITTY. Utilizing it, he won several contests.

The only younger person I ever heard do some of these hollers was Mike Seeger. (But Mike isn't young any more ;-) And he stressed that this was a method of "communication", and the hollerers could be recognized by their signature calls---the same way those in the know could recognize who was in the pilothouse of a given Mississippi River steamboat just by the personal way in which he blew the whistle. The same went for train whistles. There was a whole language involved that could give real info---sometimes lifesaving information, like: "I'LL BE PASSING ON THE PORT/LEFT SIDE" or "ON THE STARBOARD SIDE" or "THE BRIDGE AHEAD IS OUT--DANGER"

song lyric fragment:

The people knew by the whistle's moan
That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones.



Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:52 PM

Thank you Art, most interesting and enligtening.

never considered yodelling but it ties in with certain C/ w singers styles or is that just coincidence

oops thread drift

cheers anyway

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 10:35 PM

Breezy,

I feel it could be a certain percentage coincidence or luck, but also just an attempt to add something salable ($$$$$$) and vocally mesmerizing to the product that more rural mountain country music has become in this new millenium. And the cowboy singers yodeling was quite different from the pyrotechnics that Elton Britt did---and even the more basic yodels of Jimmie Rodgers.

Art

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 11:18 PM

Well I did ask, Breezy: Anyone know if it has ANY relation to the Swiss "hollering" across the mtn. valleys via yodeling? Just a thought.
**bg**

Thanks for the info, Artdarlin'!

LOL at George's input!

Rangerroger...thansk for the reminder...gulches, that's right, we have them, too, but they are mostly dry in W. Colorado.:-)

Great thread!

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 11:23 PM

Also, Art's posting reminded me of this, which I thought might be of interest:

Canary island whistles again
        La Gomera
Silbo developed as a means to talk across La Gomera's great ravines


A means of communication using whistling is being revived after nearly vanishing from the one island on which it is used.

The language is called Silbo Gomero, and is only heard on the Canary Island of La Gomera, off the coast of Morocco.

Until recently those who communicated in Silbo were dying out — but the government of the island made it compulsory for all schoolchildren on the island to study it, and now it is making a comeback.

"There are real masters of Silbo, but most of them are now very old," Francisco Rivero, a researcher in the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands, told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"So the local government decided to introduce it to elementary schools, so that children can learn the Silbo technique.

"It's taught in schools as a way of making children aware of their local culture."

Berber link

Silbo has only four vowels and four consonants.   The key to it is understanding the meaning of the many different tones of the whistles.

It can be heard more than two miles away — which was the key to its being sustained on the La Gomera.
        
It's practically a language in itself — just like Castilian Spanish — but it relies on tones rather than vowels and consonants.

The language has been passed on from father to son as it was essential to be able to communicate over long distances across the inaccessible valleys.

"The island is very hilly, with lots of ravines, which make communication very difficult," explained Dr Rivero.

As a result, a tradition developed whereby if one person heard a whistle, they passed it on.

Islanders got so skilled at it that messages have been successfully passed right from one end of the island to the other.

"Historically, from the earliest settlers on the Canaries, the Silbo language was the mobile phone of the period," Dr Rivero said.

"[It] allowed people to communicate across great distances, because its frequency allowed the sound to be transmitted.

"This form of communication dates back before the Spanish conquest, in the 15th Century."

Structure

Silbo is believed to have come to the island from the Berber people of Morocco, Dr Rivero added.
        
The Canary Islands have very strong links with Morocco, particularly the Berbers, and there is evidence that there may be some people deep in the Atlas mountains who also use whistling to communicate.

However, Silbo on La Gomera is unique as it has adopted Spanish speech patterns.

"It's practically a language in itself — just like Castilian Spanish — but it relies on tones rather than vowels and consonants," Dr Rivero stated.

"The tones are whispered at different frequencies, using Spanish grammar.   If we spoke English here, we'd use an English structure for whistling.

"It's not just disjointed words — it flows, and you can have a proper conversation."

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 03:08 AM

Morning from the U K

Well how about that about the Canaries, saved walking and there were no mobile phones

It reminded me me that when I was even younger than I am now , when on holiday in the welsh hills we would take pleasure in hearing our voices echo.

And Welsh itself as a language has made a tremendous comeback over the last 50 years too.

Hey , I can claim that I used to holler once, just to hear my own voice!

bit Like being on the mudcat.!!!

Its a free for all now

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 03:36 AM

In "folklore" a holler as a place where a person lives can generally be taken as meaning just about any out-of-the-way place. The connotation often, perhaps usually, is "a place where most people don't go," and reference to someone who "lives in the holler" usually implies someone who lives a "hermit existence."

A "holler" in my (flatland) area was used by old-timers to mean just that there were enough trees 'round the house that you couldn't see it from the road, (and sometimes that the front drive was rough enough to "discourage" going in).

The "lives in a holler" usually is used in folk narratives as a shorthand to convey that the "regular people" don't associate with the person, although the usage varies somewhat as to whether they're shunned by the town or just avoid contact with the "regulars" by their own choice. Usually when one happens the other follows, so both meanings can usually be assumed.

In a particular song or poem that has some association with a specific place or region or culture there may be additional nuances. Some of the "additions" are widely used, and some appear to be quite local.

Knowing when to apply the "additionals" is part of what makes learning about folk usages so interesting; but there's always the hazard of applying more meaning (from a usage in one context) than is really inherent in the recitation at hand (if it's from an even slightly different context). Of course, except in a classroom, it's usually enough to know that the discription is of an "isolated" person who lives "off the beaten path" and is considered "suspicious" by the regular folk.

In most usages, the intent is to describe "a kind of person" more than to tell you about the place where they live.

When applied to an animal (critter) "lives in a holler" normally would refer to just a holler (hollow) log, tree stump, or other denning place. The "implied sense" often is that the critter is in a place where it's "hard to get to 'em so supper may be late." Applied to a critter, "lives in a holler" says nothing about the critter's persona, since "most all" critters are like that.

As a method of signalling, the "holler" - and the art of "hollering" - was probably more used to call the livestock in than for communication with other people in times and places I can remember. On the flatland where I lived, it doesn't take too much lung power to be heard over fairly significant distances, so few people had "heavy-duty hollers" for regular use, but distinctive calls for calling the hogs to slop, the cows for milking, or the chickens to scratch were used by a lot of people, and the 'stock knew and understood "their" calls. (Except the chickens, who think¹ any noise means food.)

¹ "think" applied to chickens is a euphemism.

In hills or mountains, echos are of some significance, so the "hollers" used for communication are tailored either to accentuate or to counter the echo. This gives many of them fairly characteristic sounds in that usage. Echoes are quite rare in my flatland area, so "pure" (hill-country traditional) hollers are/were correspondingly rare.

As to the song, I'd take exception with:

"she gives her own rude (probably wooden or reed) flute"

The lyric:

"The case was covered with stickers - and words that this woman had scrawled
From the magic places she'd been to - trinkets from her own Mardi Gras"

along with the bit about "had to drop out of the band" suggests to me that this old lady played a "modern instrument," had travelled in (possibly folkish) music circles in the "outside world" and the flute was just what the kid needed to get back in the band.

If one wants it to be a primitive instrument that's okay; but a couple more verses would be needed to make clear that the old woman gave her another dream to replace the one the kid started out with - and that could lead to a whole 'nother song, which probably needs to be written.

John

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: robinia
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 05:59 AM

Two commments on "holler" and "hollering." Whether it's called that or not, I suspect that "hollering" across the fields is something that rural folk (especially men) have always done; my mother said that her country uncles, from the south of England, had a habit of talking very loud -- almost yelliing -- over the phone too! Also, there's a special quality to the West Virginia "hollers" where I did a lot of census work on backcountry roads and where I'd often find one or two surnames repeated over and over. A kind of family "hemmed-in-ness." It went along with the cat briars and laurel hells that could make bushwacking your way out of the steep-sided creek bed so much hotter and scratchier than any trail -- not to mention a kind of very defensive, "hemmed in" thinking too (including, it seemed, a fear of higher education as a step away from family closeness, even a step toward, horrors, communism!). As a government agent, I was met with great suspicion (and once with an unleashed, snarling dog), but I also met with great friendliness. So I hesitate to overgeneralize , , ,

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 06:51 AM

Just to confuse things, in a probably rare(r) usage, "a holler up the road"¹ is a distance - about as far as you can hear one holler.

"A hop an' a holler" is a little bit further than a holler away.

"A skip an' a holler" is wee bit further than a "hop an' a holler" but not quite a "holler 'n a ha'f ."

¹ In a usage heard a few times ca 1940 - early '50s(?) neighbors described as "lives a holler up the road" implies nearby - and "friendly," i.e. a neighbor you'd holler at (visit with) occasionally. In this usage, as I heard it, there was the implication that you did visit with them occasionally.

Possibly briefly, "gimme a holler" meant call me on the telephone, which - given the voice quality of some of the REA Co-op phone systems was a lot like standing out back and trying to be heard a quarter section away. This usage seemed to disappear when the "crank phones" faded, since talking on the phone in normal conversational tones just didn't fit with the expression.

John

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 07:01 AM

many thanks JohnIn Kansas, most comprehensive, you and Art have been a tremendous help, thank you for your time trouble and gift of eloquence

Perhaps the reference in the song to 'Help them out of the ditch ' was a reference to rurality! new word?

John

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 07:33 AM

"Help them out of a ditch" describes a very common hazard of early automobile travel. The expression probably doesn't predate the auto by much, since a horse (or other animal) team seldom would drag you into much that they couldn't drag you out of.

Automobiles lacked the "horse sense" to stay on the road, and on early rural roads washouts, ruts, and other hazards to navigation quite often rendered one immobile. It could quite often be necessary to seek assistance; but "helping someone," particularly a stranger, with a "temporary predicament did mean that the "local" had to interrupt work in progress, often hitch up a team, (sometimes catch them first if they were out to pasture,) sometimes travel a ways, and quite often go home covered with your mud.

Some would almost always do it willingly; some would do it, but grudgingly. Some would always have an excuse. ("Zek'l up the road a way has a lot better team than mine." etc.)

A common implication was that the person would help with things that were "not their problem," although whether that's an included meaning depends largely on the state of mind of the one(s) using the term(?).

A slightly different shading was that the person would be willing to help you even when you'd done something stupid, like driving yourself into a ditch. (i.e., was not judgmental about helping, or about picking whom or when to help).

John

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 06:48 PM

Maybe a year or two ago, in a thread, we had a discourse that showed that some in the U.K. had no idea what we in the U.S. meant when we said "country".   It really meant a nation with borders to them----so why in the world did we call it COUNTRY MUSIC in the U.S.?

I explained that the use of the word Country---as in the Music-- meant "rural" as opposed to "urban"! It means the part of our nation where farms and small town were more prevalent.

It's fascinating how easily we can talk to each other and still have no clue about what we are really saying.

Art

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: GUEST,Cool B
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 07:40 PM

Regarding the likeness or relationship of hollerring to yodelling, it all started in the Swiss alps when a lost skier sought refuge at a chalet occupied by a man and his wife and daughter. The man of the house took in the lost skier on the understanding that he did not interfere with his daughter whom he would share a room with. Early the next day the skier took off quickly with the man of the house yelling or hollering from the front door, "You dirty swine, you interfered with my daughter" To which the skier yodelled or hollered," youroldladytoo " and that was the origin of hollerin.

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: rich-joy
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 07:57 PM

hmmm ... I bought a whole CD of Hollerin, some time back :

"Hollerin" on Rounder # 0071 - recorded in Spivey's Corner, North Carolina, back in 1975-76 and containing 24 tracks of styles and usages ... come to think of it, may have been through Dick G ...


Cheers! R-J

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 08:10 PM

CoolB, thanks for that LOL!!

As in Dick Greenhaus of Camsco Records?

Subject: RE: Meaning of 'Holler'
From: breezy
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 08:47 PM

As the Auther of the song lives in the Ashville area that too would link to the term Holler

cheers chaps

I'm fine now , this thread can rest, thank you all.

'and yourold lady too'


heard it years ago

i was that skier