Like billy-o

This Phrase is, somewhat quaintly, used as a comparator of the most extreme type. This exchange from the fifth series of Downton Abbey aptly illustrates its usage; “Lord Grantham – But darling, you don’t want to rush into anything.” Rose: “But I do. I want to rush in like billy-o.” Perhaps it illustrates a paucity of vocabulary on the part of the speaker or reflects that there isn’t a word that can reflect the extent of the experience.

But what does Billy-o mean and where did it come from? There is a bewildering array of explanations to pick our way through. Perhaps the most beguiling is that it is a reference to the hell-fire and brimstone preacher, Joseph Billio, who turned up in the Essex town of Maldon in 1696, built a chapel in Market Hill and treated the (un)lucky residents to passionate and lengthy sermons each week. There is even a plaque in the town claiming that the preacher gave his name to the phrase like billio.

The problem with accepting this story at face value is that the earliest recorded usage of the phrase in print is some two centuries later. The Fort Wayne Daily Gazette, in March 1882, described some unfortunate was described as “lay[ing] on his side for about two hours, roaring like billy-hoo with the pain, as weak as a mouse.” Leaving aside the slight variation in the spelling – and bear in mind the Essex origin requires the word to be spelt as the preacher’s surname was – the sense is as we would use it today. In the edition of 9^th August 1885 of the Referee we have, perhaps, the earliest example of something more analogous to the modern spelling; “shure it’ll rain like billy-oh.” The use of shure adds another intriguing element to the story – perhaps it is Irish in origin.

As well as the fulsome preacher, another candidate to be proclaimed the progenitor of the phrase is an Italian soldier and contemporary of Garibaldi, Lieutenant Nino Bixio. He is said to have charged into battle exhorting his troops to fight like Bixio. This theory requires us to accept that the English mangled the Italian’s name – there are many examples where words of foreign origin are not assimilated into English unscathed – and chose to use it instead of some more obvious home-grown candidates such as the Puffing Billy, an early steam engine whose progress, stately by modern standards, would have been shockingly daring in contemporary terms, or William the Third, the victor of the Battle of the Boyne, who was known as Good King Billy.

The clue to the phrase’s origin surely lies in a piece of doggerel printed by the Bismarck Tribune in September 1883; “and the people cheered him like billy-be dang”. The phrase looks like a corruption of Billy-be-damned which appeared in Robert Burt’s novel, The Scourge of the Ocean, published in 1837; “They knocked off their deviltries, and became all on a sudden as sanctified as Billy Be-damned.” We may well be in the territory of minced oaths – swear words which were modified to avoid blasphemy.

The phrase like the devil dates back to Elizabethan times and the goat has often been associated with the devil. A male goat is colloquially known as a billy. Perhaps our phrase is just an oath where a goat has been substituted for the devil. This clearly is what is happening with billy-be-damned and another odd phrase, like billy hell. By the 20^th century the phrase was part of the vernacular. Examples include “And they fight? Like billy-o” from W J Locke’s Fortunate Youth (1914) and “The Holy Rollers were going at it like billy-oh” from the Observer of 1927 – pretty much the era that the Downton dialogue was replicating.