Hoo-Hoo Bird in a Haw-Haw Tree

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Beth Rickenbaugh. I’m calling from Charlotte, North Carolina.

When I was growing up, back in the 60s and 70s, my grandmother had a saying that I’ve never heard from anyone else. If I walked in the room and she thought my hair looked a mess, she said, Beth, your hair looks like a hoo-hoo bird in a haw-haw tree. And I just knew that I needed to go find a comb or a brush and get busy and never really thought about what it meant or, you know, where it came from until I listened to your show a couple of times and I happened to remember it. So I’ve never heard anyone else say it, just my grandmother.

So you would be disheveled and she would say you look like what? A hoo-hoo bird and a haw-haw tree. Hoo-hoo bird and haw-haw.

But just my hair. Just your hair. It didn’t have anything to do with what I had on. This was the 60s and 70s, so, you know, I was a teenager in the 70s. I never got that comment for anything I wore. It was just my hair was a mess, according to her.

Well, I think what’s going on is that there are a couple of linguistic strands here, and your mom may have combined them because there’s another much more common expression like a hurrah’s nest, like the word hurrah, like a hurrah’s nest or a hurrah’s nest. And a hurrah or a hurrah supposedly is some sort of big, messy animal, probably a bird. And at least since the early 19th century, to say something looks like a hurrah’s nest is to say it looks like a mess.

And then there’s also a tradition of talking about a hoo-hoo bird. And a hoo-hoo bird is a mythical bird that has unusual characteristics. There’s lots of different stories about hoo-hoo birds. Sometimes they’re described as this creature that flies backwards to keep the dust out of its eyes. Or this bird sticks its head in the sand and whistles out its rear end.

But anyway, the expression hoo-hoo’s nest in a ha-ha tree, I see that in a 1933 newspaper from Vermont. Somebody quotes their grandma’s old saying, go brush your hair. It looks like a hoo-hoo’s nest in a ha-ha tree. That’s very similar. It’s not altogether that common, though, and who Rosness has faded in use over the last century or so. So folks like you that have got memories of the generations saying it, that’s kind of the last hanging on of it, the last minutes of it. Beth, it’s lovely that you have that linguistic heirloom to carry on.

Well, thank you. Thanks for the explanation. That’s great. And thanks for sharing your memories with us. We appreciate it.

All right. Well, have a great day. All right. You too. Be well. Take care, Beth. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye.

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