"WALKER"

Oxford English Dictionary XII: 44. "More fully, Hookey Walker." [Always written with initial capital; probably a use of the surname Walker.] An exclamation expressive of incredulity, Also occasionally as a sb. (= 'humbug'), as in "That is all Walker."

1811 Lex. Balatronicum, Hookee Walker, an expression signifying that the story is not true, or that the thing will not occur.

Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949) 403.

Hooky Walker! A phrase signifying that something either is not true or will not occur: (low) colloquial, from ca. 1810. Lex. Bal. Also Hook[e]y!, as in Bee, and by hooky!, as in Manchon.‹2. Be off! (low) coll. from ca. 1830. Since ca. 1840, gen. abbr. to Walker! . . . . Acc. to Bee, ex. John Walker, a prevaricating hook-nosed spy.

40. "Walker" A Christmas Carol, Stave Four (p. 11)

The boy from whom Scrooge orders the prize turkey responds with suitable incredulity, for "Walker" was a nineteenth-century colloquialism equivalent in meaning to "humbug" (see entry for page three), as in "That is all Walker." This would seem to be a specialized use of a surname, since more fully the expression is "Hookey Walker," and the "W" is always capitalized.

Victorian colloquialisms

Mid-nineteenth-century English was somewhat different from the English we speak today — not in its usage but in its vocabulary. The following colloquialisms all come from A Christmas Carol:

Ebenezer: 'the stone of help' (I Samuel vii. 12); used as a name of a particular Methodist or Baptist chapel, and afterwards contemptuously to mean "dissenting chapel" (1856).

Scroudge: 'a crush, squeeze, or crowd' (1839), from such dialects as those spoken in Kent and Cornwall.

Bob: a pet form of Robert; also, London slang for a coin worth 1.5 pence in the 14th c., and by 1837 a shilling.

Cratchet: a dilemma, a tool used by thatchers, the stomach‹hence, to eat heartily.

Crotchet: a whimsical fancy, a peculiar notion held by an individual in opposition to popular opinion (1831).

Jacob: in 1662 a Jacobus was a gold coin; otherwise, the name alludes to the biblical patriarch who in Genesis 30: 40 made the inferior sheep he had been given breed faster.

Marley: from marl (soil); in Yorkshire, sleet.

Come Down: an expression meaning "to lay down money"; in 1822, Chrystal II. 248: "I'll make them come down, and handsomely too, or they shall repent for it."

Humbug: colloquially, a hoax, imposition, fraud, or sham (1751); used interjectionally to mean "stuff and nonsense" (1825); in slang, to deceive or cheat.

Situation: post or employment (1813).

Bedlam: the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, founded as a priory in 1247; by 1402, it was a hospital or asylum for lunatics; by extension, any madhouse (1663); hence, any scene of mad confusion (1667).

Sovereign: a gold coin originally worth 22s. 6d., but latterly worth only 10 or 11 shillings; by royal proclamation in 1817 the coin's value was fixed at twenty shillings.

Copper: a vessel made of copper. particularly a large boiler for cooking or laundry purposes, but now more often made of iron (1833).

'Change: a place of (financial or commercial) exchange, as in the King's or Queen's Exchange (1601); a money changer's office (1569); the 'Burse' or Exchange built in London by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1566 received from Queen Elizabeth I the name of the Royal Exchange.

Griping: The action of grip[p]ing, clutching, grasping, or seizing tenaciously, especially with the hands, arms, claws, and the like.

Prize Turkey: Although we associate Victorian Christmas festivities with roast goose, for those who could not afford it the meatier turkey was preferable. The North American M. gallopavo had already been domesticated in Mexico, and shortly after the Spanish discovery of that country in 1518 was introduced to Europe for the table (OED XI, 480).

Skreeks: from Screech (also screik, screak, skreigh), to utter a loud, shrill cry.

Fusty: That which has lost its freshness, stale-smelling, musty, as of a wine-cask; of bread, corn, meat, etc., smelling of mould or damp (1491); hence, that which has lost its interest.

Welsh wig: Dickens describes the headgear of young Scrooge's employer as being a "Welsh wig," which we may see clearly in Green's 1892 lithograph Christmas Eve at Old Fezziwig's. As the ball in the warehouse breaks up at 11:00 P. M., the Fezziwigs take their station at the door; "shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas" (59, verbatim from the centre of the facing page) in "Stave Two, The First of the Three Spirits."

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welch [sic] wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling. . . . ["The First of the Three Spirits," 57]

The John Leech colourized illustration Mr. Fezziwig's Ball in "Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits," suggests that it is a very curly wig, but tied at the back with a ribbon, as was the custom in the later eighteenth century. However, the wig looks much more like his own hair, perhaps dyed. On the other hand, Green's rather later illustration shows the "wig" clearly, with a frise of curls exposed over the forehead, and a pigtail.

However, there is a pertinent definition in The Annotated Dickens, vol. 1 (Note 32, "Stave II"):

a Welsh wig: A cap made of knitted worsted. The "wig" becomes part of his surname. (p. 851)

Another heavily annotated edition, The Annotated Christmas Carol, provides a definition that clarifies the allusion to Wales:

Note 32: Welsh wig. A woolen or worsted cap, originally made chiefly in Montgomery, Wales. [p. 96]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Annotated Dickens. Edited with introduction and annotations by Samuel Patrick Hearne. New York, Avenel Books, 1989.

_____. The Annotated Dickens. Edited with introductions & annotations by Edward Guiliano and Philip Collins. Volume One: Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and Hard Times. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVII.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.

_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.

_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.

_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. (1843). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978.

____. A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by Charles Edmund Brock. London: J. M. Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1905, rpt. 1963.

_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.

_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915.

_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.


Created 6 June 2001

Last modified 21 December 2024