Oxford.
_"Hip, Hip, Hurrah!"_ (Vol. vii., pp. 595. 633).--The reply suggested by
your correspondent R. S. F., that the above exclamation originated in the
Crusades, and is a corruption of the initial letters of "Hierosolyma est
perdita," never appeared to me to be very apposite.
In _A Collection of National English Ballads_, edited and published by W.
Chapple, 1838, in a description of the song "Old Simon, the King," the
favourite of Squire Western in _Tom Jones_, the following lines are quoted:
"'Hang up all the poor hep drinkers,'
Cries old Sim, the king of skinkers."[4]
A note to the above states, in reference to the word "hep," that it was a
term of derision, applied to those who drank a weak infusion of the "hep"
(hip) berry, or sloe. "Hence," says the writer, "the exclamation of 'Hip,
hip, hurrah,' corrupted from 'Hip, hip, away.'" The couplet quoted above
was written up in the Apollo Room at the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, where
Ben Jonson's club, the "Apollo Club," used to meet. Many a drinker of
modern Port has equally good reason to exclaim with his brethren of old,
"Hip, hip, away!"