by Dymphna Lonergan
Irish Slán and American English ‘So Long’
I read with interest a recent Irish Central article, ‘How the Irish invented the phrase ‘so long’, thinking there was some new research that finally establishes that the Irish word slán ‘goodbye’ is the origin of American English ‘So Long’. According to Irish Central there is a case for claiming the Irish word slán, ‘goodbye’ as the origin of the farewell term ‘So Long’. They explain:
In English, slán would often be rendered phonetically as ‘slan’ or ‘slawn.’ Over time, the phrase morphed into “so long,” preserving its original spirit of wishing safety and well-being.
Lexicographers and linguists have indeed been puzzling over the American English term ‘So Long’’s origin, and some have advanced a possible origin in Irish slán. My own research to date, however, has not found that an origin in Irish slán can be claimed with any certainty. At least I have not found any evidence beyond speculation.
Previous Research
My starting point in Irish English is the 1910 publication English as we speak it in Ireland by P. W. Joyce. It is a collection of words that have their origin in the Irish language and are now anglicized in spelling or words represent the English language in Ireland at a particular time. Under ‘S’, there is no slan, or slawn, or slaun in his collection of Irish language words that have come across to Irish English.
The second scholarly work I value is the 1996 A Dictionary of Anglo-Irish by Diarmaid Ó Muirithe. His only reference to the word slán is its use in the Irish language as slán leat said to a departing person and slán agat said by a departing person. He finds the latter rendered in English in a 1609 book Captain Thomas Stuckeley as ‘slane haggat’. Outside of that reference, there are no other occurrences of slán or any other anglicized form of the word in Ó Muirithe’s collection.
Terence Dolan’s 1998 A Dictionary of Hiberno-Irish is also a collection of Irish language words reported as being in use in the English of Ireland. His sole reference is slán as it occurs in James Joyce’s 1922 novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Dolan, however, mentions the theory that Irish slán could have a possible origin in the American English term ‘So Long’ (as advanced by Frances Griffith in 1984) but also finds ‘the connection is improbable – as are the suggestions that it may originate with Hebrew sholom or Arabic salām ’peace’.
Other suggestions for ‘So Long’ origins
The current online Mirriam-Webster dictionary of American English is equally sceptical about ‘So Long’ having an origin in Hebrew sholom and also disqualifies the Arabic word (that they spell as salaam) because it is a greeting, not a farewell. Another possible origin is the German adieu so lange ‘goodbye until we meet again.’ Mirriam-Webster suggests that the first written reference to ‘So Long’ in American English is in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1860) but that it was not well known then as an ‘expression of farewell’. More intriguing is the Mirriam-Webster reference to ‘So Long’ appearing in Australian writings ‘only five years later.’
This is interesting. Thanks to Australia’s digital archive Trove, (https://trove.nla.gov.au/) I have found the term ‘So Long’ used in 1943 as a caption for a newspaper photo of Australian men sailing off to the European war (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, 20 May 1943 and in a 1941 poem by Will Lawson that begins
‘So-Long.’
They have swung her out in the bay,
old man,
And over the waters clear
I can hear the grumbling engines plan
Their speed, and a course to steer.
Her masthead light is a low-swung star
In the star-world’s jewelled throng;
And you’ll be out o’er the rolling bar
To-morrow. Old chum, so-long!
(Critic, Adelaide, 6 April 1904, p. 3)
Back to the Mirriam-Webster entry, and the discussion of ‘So Long’ and Whitman. In answer to a query from a friend as to the origin of the phrase, Whitman explained that it was ‘a salutation of departure, greatly used among sailors, sports, & prostitutes. The sense of it is – till we meet again.’
That we should find ‘So Long’ in Australia and the United States is not surprising if this term is nautical in its origin. And the hint that ‘So Long’ may have started as low level slang is not surprising for an Irish language word if we are considering Ir. slán as the origin, the nineteenth century emigrant Irish especially often occupying the lower rung of the class system in the new country and speaking non-standard English.
Trove also found a reference to the lower-class nature of ‘So Long’ in 1909, when the English Lord Chelmsford, Governor of Queensland in saying goodbye to his regiment laments that, unlike the French au revoir, English does not have a farewell word that covers the idea of meeting again. He continues
unless indeed it were so long. Yet he could hardly bring himself, even in his extreme need, to countenance the recognition of ‘so long’ as the King’s English.
As Chelmsford was appointed Governor of Queensland in 1905, he may have picked up the slang term ‘So Long’ while he was patron of the Moreton Regiment there. In all events, by 1941, ‘So-Long’ was seen in Australia as an old term according to these lines from a poem in The Townsville Daily Bulletin.
‘SO -LONG.’
When tone and tale I now at night
Old times remembering,
What phrase is it that from the Past
Comes falntly echoing?
‘Tis this— heard oft on road and track
Where bushmen, brown and strong.
Clasp hands, and sadly ride along—
‘So-Iong, Old Mate—So-long’
Here is an Australian bush setting where itinerant and seasonal workers would develop short-term friendships as they were obliged to move on. (See my discussion of an Irish connection with another bush term, shiralee in https://tintean.org.au/2016/07/06/irish-words-shiralee/)
In 1943 ‘So Long’ is a caption for a photograph of Australian R.A.N. and R.A.A.F. troops embarking for overseas service (The Courier Mail: Brisbane, 20 May, 1943, p. 3).
So Long and Slán
Is ‘So Long’ the Irish goodbye slán in disguise? Irish Central seems to think so. The discussion in Mirriam-Webster has furthered the search for the origin of the term. Some previous suggestions have been discounted, and there is a new focus on where the term was used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and there is an emphasis on using ‘So Long’ with the meaning of meeting again. This meaning, however, is not in the Irish word slán.
Travelling itinerants or sailors or soldiers may have spread ‘So Long’ during times of great movement, war, economic hardship, migration, and general seafaring. Added to that is how quickly ‘So Long’ disappeared from currency (although still current in song).
It remains an interesting debate, and the information is still coming in. More digitised records may shed more light on the timeline of the term in print and settle the debate as to whether an origin for ‘So Long’ in Ir. slán can be proposed with confidence.
Dymphna Lonergan is a member of the Tinteán collective, a retired academic from Flinders University where she has been a long-time researcher in Irish words in English, especially Australian English. This research culminated in the book Sounds Irish: The Irish Language in Australia (Wakefield Press).
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