Irish American Vernacular English Origin of Hoodoo.
The Sanas (Irish Etymology) of Hoodoo
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How did Hausa words find their way into Ireland and thence to Brooklyn in the early 1880s? How did they get to Canada ? Hoodoo is not related etymologically as a word to voodoo.
ABOUT ORALITY
Learn how the Irish were carried off as captives by the Corsairs in the middles ages to Africa, maybe as early as the third century. English slavers and the African kings and caboceers (native middlemen who arranged the raids) and slave captains
16th-20th Century Maps of Africa
In 1948, Melville J. Herskovits established the First African Studies program at Northwestern University. This particular online collection contains 113 antique maps of Africa dating from the middle of the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century. Visitors can utilize a search engine to look through the maps, or they may also browse by title,
cartographer, or date. There are a number of real finds here, including Frederik de Wits 1708 map of North Africa (titled Barbaria) and an early map of Zanzibar from 1740.
Hoodoo , n., a cause of bad luck, a jinx; a person or thing whose presence brings bad luck; a magician or necromancer; an evil spirit; an eerie-looking rock pinnacle, or earth pillar, formed by erosion and nature; a mountain in Canada.
Uath Dubh, (pron. h-úŏ doo): dark specter, evil phantom, a malevolent thing; horror, dread; a dark, spiky, evil-looking thing. Uath, n., a form or shape; a spectre or phantom; dread, terror, hate. Old Gaelic name for the hawthorn. Dubh, (pron. doo, duv), adj., dark; black; malevolent, evil; wicked; angry, sinister; gloomy, melancholy; strange, unknown.
(O’Donaill, 457, 1294; Dineen, 374, 1287; De Bhaldraithe, English-Irish Dictionary, 755; Dwelly, 988)
"Fifth Hoodoos Thomas & Seals Lose Game" (headline, S.F. Examiner, March 15, 1913, p. 15)
Uath, -a, pl. id., m. (pron. h-ooah; aspirate “th” = “h” in Irish and Gaelic), a form or shape; a spectre or phantom; dread, terror, hate. See fuath. Uath- in compds., dreadful Uath, -a, pl., -ta, m., the white-thorn+, the name of the aspirate “h” in the Irish alphabet, (which is Ms. Symbol for ua or ó). See uath, lonely, and note that H is often represented by a single stroke in Ogham.
The word hoodoo only enters American language in the 1880s. Most dictionaries derive “hoodoo” from voodoo, a syncretic religion of the African diaspora. This is currently discounted by a number of researchers. Hoodoo rocks are “grotesque eroded landforms” in deserts all across America . There are hoodoos in Alberta 's Dinosaur Provincial Park , the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, and in Yellowstone Park in the United States.
In the 1880s, the hoodoo man was in Brooklyn.
“I’M NO GYPSY, I’M IRISH,’ SAYS EDWARD O’ROURKE
“...His Arrest as Hoodoo Man. Miss Myers Says That O’Rourke Was Introduced by a Woman as a Gypsy King
“Edward O’Rourke, the young man arrested in Flatbush Saturday, accused of posing as a hoodoo man and of collecting $50 from Margaret Meyer, a servant...” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 8, 1901, 20)
The Hoodoo was a gallows bird.
“HARD LUCK AND A HOODOO --
“The Tale of a Hangman’s Cap and Noose
“It is a tale of the hoodoo the writer is about to tell – a hoodoo which began active business in Brooklyn ...” (Brooklyn Eagle, March 25, 1894, 20)
The hoodoo haunted a Brooklyn baseball park in 1887.
“A HOODOO SHOT -- Why the Brooklyn Base Ball Team Is Winning --
“...A shadowy figure with wings that spread out at least twelve feet flew in the window...It was the hoodoo beginning his deadly work...The red haired girl...and the white horse... are the mascots purchased two weeks ago by Manager Byrne immediately after the terrible series of disasters... Everything has now prospered and the terrible hoodoo has fled.
(Brooklyn Eagle, Aug. 11, 1887, 4)
In 1883, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the Irish “Hoodoo” was a necromancer.
“A young man named Hogan charged Foster Rankin, Edward Horan, Dennis Sullivan, and Albert Hodge with necromancy and conspiracy before Alderman Fuller today... The other night..after having some wine, they introduced him to a magician, or ‘Hoodoo,’ who was supposed to work supernatural wonders. The ‘Hoodoo’ passed his hands over Hogan’s head, and made him think he was President Judge of Lackawanna County .”
(N.Y. Times, Aug. 26, 1883, 1)
In the 19th century, in Ireland, English colonialism was a hoodoo.
“In Ireland ...he fled from him on sight, for fear he would "hoodoo" them in some way.”
(Thomas Addis Emmet, Incidents of My Life, 1911, 75)
Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman visited hoodoo land in Yellowstone Park.
“I had wanted to go to the Yellowstone river region – wanted specially to see...the ‘hoodoo’ or goblin land of that country.”
(Walt Whitman, Specimen Days, 1883, 1887, 229.)
But the hoodoo has always been in Ireland. Today the phantom of the hoodoo has been euhemerized* to a jinx in sports...
“ Leinster break Munster hoodoo with late show -- “CELTIC LEAGUE FINAL - Leinster 24 Munster 20 –.” (The News Letter, Belfast , Ireland ; December 17, 2001 )
Most Anglo-American dictionaries derive hoodoo from voodoo. There is no proof of any relation. In meaning, actually, they are quite different. Voodoo is a syncretic religion of the African-American diaspora that helixes strands of West African religious belief with Christian and Native American spirituality.
A hoodoo in Ireland is a very common word-phrase used to describe a hex or a malevolent curse. In New Orleans and the American south it was used by the Irish, Scots, and African-American communities to describe a spell or amulet.
