Colliewobbles
The term is uniquely Australian, however. "colly-wobbles" or "collie wobbles" : 'A stomach ache, colloquial from cattle' Extracted from colic, plus the Australian "wobbles", a cattle disease from eating palm leaves.
A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English Partridge, Third Edition, 1970
"Hear the Barrackers A''Shouting"
Aussie Rules is, however, believed to have added one word (and closely related to Collingwood) to the common English language.
The Oxford Dictionary's full edition of some 1,800 pages gives the only definition of 'barrack' as that of an army base.
Yet "barrackers" appears in the Australian football lexicon well before the end of the 19th century.
Games played between Melbourne and the 14th Regiment of the English military based in Melbourne attracted some of the biggest crowds at the time.
The 14th Regiment barracks and parade ground are believed to have been between Lonsdale and Latrobe Streets and at the western end of the city. Reports of matches indicate that the Regiment brought a considerable number of their own followers to the games, perhaps leaving us with the "barrackers."
Some fifty years later, an alternative version of “barrack” came to light when a letter published on August 12, 1922 from a correspondent to The Australasian, "An Old Melbournite", giving his address as London, England, recalled a match between fierce rivals of the day, Melbourne and Carlton, and added … :
“An Irish policeman, in giving evidence about something that occurred at the match stated that he could not hear because of the “barking” (he referred to the enthusiasm of the various supporters and spoke the word with a strong Irish accent). The papers next morning somewhat exaggerated it so that it read like “barakin”, and the phrase was adopted ever after to signify “supporting” .
Other more remote possibilities include the 'barack' used in Northern Ireland and meant to boast or brag of one's powers, or possibly 'borack' from an aboriginal language, meaning to 'banter or have fun'.
Either way, "barrackers" are an essential part of our game, but perhaps less so are those of a class that have seemingly have a similar background.
The correspondent of 1922 also suggested that a word perhaps closely aligned with "barracking" originated under similar circumstances – "larrikin" – although he did not state just where the term may have originated - (possibly from someone "larking" around).
The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the word originated “not long before 1870", noting its use in The Melbourne Herald on April 4, 1870.
The compilers of the Dictionary had obviously heard of the "Old Melburnite" version, suggesting "the common theory that the word was used by an Irish policeman in an Melbourne court in 1869", meaning perhaps a researcher had scanned all the newspapers of the time and “had revealed nothing” - but the possibility of the word being used in an unreported case and passed on by word of mouth remains strong.
Footnotes
I have a lot more articles to share, but without knowing of australianfootball.com coming, I set up my own site ozsportshistory.com with a Melbourne Rules section covering (to date) the very earliest days of the game and some of the unheralded heroes of the time. Check it out while I duplicate some of the articles
Comments
Barkly St End 26 June 2012
"To barrack" and "barrackers" is perhaps the most important contribution Australian Football has made to the English language, with a bit of doubt still existing around the origins of the word. Of course, Australian Football has made many contributions to the Australian vernacular, including many localised terms that can be traced to any one of the Southern capitals, some of which have spread and found wider acceptance across the broader footy community.
Barkly St End 26 June 2012
It's also worth noting, and this is touched on in the article, that "to barrack" is one of those words that have undergone a complete reversal in meaning over the course of many decades. The Macquarie tells us that the obsolete meaning of the word is to jeer at, shout derisively at a player or team. So the earliest meaning referred to one set of fans shouting abuse at the opposition (I'm sure we can all picture what is being referred to here!). But the more modern meaning is to support and shout encouragement towards your own team.
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