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''B'hoy'' and ''g'hal'' (meant to evoke an Irish pronunciation of ''boy'' and ''gal'', respectively) were the prevailing
slang A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of pa ...
words used to describe the young men and women of the rough-and-tumble
working class culture Working-class culture or proletarian culture is a range of cultures created by or popular among working-class people. The cultures can be contrasted with high culture and folk culture, and are often equated with popular culture and low culture (t ...
of
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in the late 1840s and into the period of the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. They spoke a slang, with phrases such as "hi-hi", "lam him", and "cheese it".


Etymology

The word b'hoy was first used in 1846. In the United States it was a
colloquialism Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ''general parlance'') is the linguistic style used for casual and informal communication. It is the most common form of speech in conversation amo ...
for "spirited lad" and "young spark". The word originates from the Irish pronunciation of boy.


Theatrical examples

The prototypical artistic representation of a b'hoy came in 1848, when Frank Chanfrau played the character Mose the Fireboy in Benjamin A. Baker's ''A Glance at New York''. Mose is a pugilistic Irish volunteer fireman. T. Allston Brown gives this description:
He stood there in his red shirt, with his fire coat thrown over his arm, the stovepipe hat — better known as a "plug" — drawn down over one eye, his trousers tucked into his boots, a stump of a cigar pointing up from his lips to his eye, the soap locks plastered flat on his temples, and his jaw protruded into a half-beastly, half-human expression of contemptuous ferocity.
Details varied with each production; some b'hoys were named Sykesy or Syksey, others were butcher's apprentices. Haswell gives a slightly different description of the archetype:
a high beaver hat, with the nap divided and brushed in opposite directions, the hair on the back of his head clipped close, while in front the temple locks were curled and greased (hence, the well-known term of 'soap-locks' to the wearer of them), a smooth face, a gaudy silk neckcloth, black frockcoat, full pantaloons, turned up at the bottom over heavy boots designed for service in slaughter houses and at fires; and when thus equipped, with his girl hanging on his arm, it would have been very injudicious to offer him any obstruction or to utter an offensive remark.
His girlfriend Lize was the prototypical g'hal, dressed in cheap finery and singing songs from her favorite
minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...
s.Lott 83-84. Mose plays became an enormous hit in New York and other large cities, and theaters were filled with b'hoys and g'hals clamoring to see Chanfrau and other actors perform Bowery b'hoy characters. William Northall even complained that at the Olympic Theatre,


See also

*
Bowery Boys (gang) The Bowery Boys (vernacular Bowery Bhoys) were a nativist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish criminal gang based in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City in the early-mid-19th century. In contrast with the Irish immigrant tenement of ...
* Bowery B'hoy * Mose Humphrey


Notes


References

* Allen, Robert C. (1991). ''Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture''. University of North Carolina Press. * Brown, T. Allston (1903). ''A History of the New York Stage: From the First Performance in 1732 to 1901''. Dodd, Mead & Company. * Cliff, Nigel (2007). ''The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America.'' Random House. * Brodsky Lawrence, Vera (1988). ''Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong. Volume I: Resonances, 1838-1849.'' University of Chicago Press. * Lott, Eric (1993). ''Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN, 0-19-507832-2. *Sante, Luc (2003). ''Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York''. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. * Wilmeth, Don B., and Bigsby, C. W. E. (1998). ''The Cambridge History of American Theatre: Beginnings to 1870''. New York: Cambridge University Press. *Foster, George G. (1850). "New York by Gas-Light", No. 12, "Mose & Lize". University of Chicago Press, 1990. Cultural history of New York City Irish-American culture Irish-American culture in New York City History of subcultures