What in the heck is ‘Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck’?

Some have claimed it’s the sound of a train running along tracks, or the sound of a cannon being loaded.

While those would be very fitting Aggie origins, the truth is less romantic: “Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck” is actually a version of a nonsense phrase that colleges all over the country used as a football chant more than a century ago.

At Texas A&M University, we’ve preserved it much longer than other schools did — probably because of its prominent use in the War Hymn, which was written in 1918.

And what does it mean? Well, “hullabaloo” is a legitimate English word meaning a noisy uproar, and “caneck, caneck” means absolutely nothing.

But it all came down to us from ancient Greek, believe it or not.

In 1972, Texas A&M president Dr. Jack K. Williams joked to a state legislative committee that "it is Chickasaw Indian for ‘Beat the hell out of the University of Texas.’”

To get to the bottom of this, we’ll need to go back and look at the ridiculous things American football fans were yelling in the late 1800s.

In the early days of college football, Princeton and Yale were among the first powerhouses, and their fans came up with cheers and songs that quickly spread to other schools across the country.

Two examples: In the mid- to late-1800s, Princeton students had a “locomotive” cheer, in which the students chanted syllables at an increasing speed, and a “rocket” cheer — this was the classic “sis-boom-bah” chant, based on the sound of a firecracker hissing into the sky and exploding, followed by spectators saying “ahh!”

Both of those chants made it to Texas A&M, where our “Locomotive” is still heard at every Midnight Yell Practice (“Rah rah rah rah, T-A-M-C …”), and there have been occasional attempts to revive the “Skyrocket” yell.

As you can see, many cheers had words or syllables that were chosen primarily for the noise they could produce.

That’s how Yale’s “Long Cheer” took shape. In 1884, students took bits of Aristophanes’ play The Frogs — which had been a smash hit comedy in ancient Greece — and put the words into a cheer they used at a baseball game, according to Yale Alumni Magazine.

“Hellaballoo-conneck-conneck” appears closer to home in an 1899 Auburn yearbook, in a yell almost identical to the 1904 Texas A&M yell.

So the concept was definitely making the rounds, like the skyrocket cheer and indeed the entire concepts of organized yelling and male cheerleaders (nationwide, cheerleading began as an all-male endeavor).

It’s not surprising that it persisted at Texas A&M, where even today, students continue carefully passing down traditions to each other.

“Hullabaloo” is an actual English word that snuck in among the nonsense syllables, possibly because it was more familiar than “parabalou.” (It’s undeniably hard to get your Greek spelled right when it’s being yelled from the opposite bleachers.) Meaning a noisy uproar, “hullabaloo” dates back nearly two centuries; the Oxford English Dictionary cites “hollowballoo” in 1762 and “hallaballoo” in 1800.

There’s no direct line from “parabalou” and “ko-ax, ko-ax” to “hullabaloo, caneck, caneck.” But it seems our Aggie phrase might have started out as Greek for “Bring ’er to shore! Ribbit, ribbit!”