'Wildly alluring - Place of the Heart' by Frances Thompson Newcastle Herald 16 October 2010 p.4-5
We attended an information session yesterday organised by Andrew Ling from the LPMA, and the designers Steve and Barney Collins who took us through their rationale and draft plans to address the safety concerns for Newcastle’s historic Bogey Hole. They want to retain the wildness of the place, and fix up the slippery stairs problem by floating a walkway over the top of the original stairs, then curve around to a platform. It looked pretty good. More information and draft plans can be accessed here on the LPMA’s website – Restoration of safe access to Newcastle’s Bogey Hole . You have until December 10 to comment to coastalharbours@lpma.nsw.gov.au If you are interested in attending future info sessions email: andrew.ling@lpma.nsw.gov.au
Origins of the name ‘Bogey Hole‘
by Gionni Di Gravio
The Bogey Hole Baths, under Shepherd’s Hill, belonging to the Corporation, have been enlarged, deepened, and have an iron railing placed around them for safety. Major Morrissett, the second last Governor of the Penal Settlement, made the walk now so popular round the Upper Reserve or Horse-Shoe Bend. He was very fond of sea bathing, and had a hole excavated in the rocks, which he used as a bath. The place was for years referred to as a “Commandant’s Bath”. It was afterwards considerably enlarged and called the “Bogey Hole,” by which it has ever since been known.
- John Windross & J.P. Ralston. Historical Records of Newcastle 1797-1897. Newcastle, 1897. p.40
We haven’t found anything referring to the excavation of baths in Morrissett’s testimony to Commissioner Bigge, and neither would we expect it. It was probably a ‘foreign order’ for the Commandant’s pleasure to pull a number of convicts from another task to his private bath. I have asked NSW State Records to look into whether there exists any records of its original construction.
The earliest reference to it we have found (located in January 2012) is a Conrad Marten drawing dated the 13th May 1841 and held in the State Library of New South Wales. It was labelled “Morrisets Bath”.
76. Morrisets Bath, Newcastle, 13th May 1841
Item 76 Morrisets Bath, Newcastle, 13th May 1841
from Sketches in Australia, 1835-1865 by Conrad Martens (1801-1878)
View Album: http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=457268#
This drawing then enabled us to locate a mention of “Morriset’s Bath” in the Sydney Morning Herald for the 16th April 1851 p3:
Possessing a good climate and means of sea-bathing, Newcastle is much frequented by invalids and visitors during the summer season, and would be much more so were house-room less difficult to be procured, and the facilities of sea-bathing encreased ; some improvements to this end have lately been made. Formerly “the ladies’ corner” of the beach, and Colonel Morriset’s bath, were alone available for bath-ing purposes, but now a ladies’ bathing-house, which is much in request, has been constructed near to the breakwater on the harbour side. The city contains many good and respectable looking houses, although none of them can lay any claim to architectural beauty.
- See: Port of Newcastle http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12926360
The earliest mention we have found thus far that in the newspapers as the ‘Bogey Hole’ is from as early as 1861. (Source: Trove)
A search through the meanings of ‘bogey’ prove quite interesting, as all are derivations refer to the supernatural.
bogey – In English folklore a horrible evil spirit or hobgoblin, usually big and black, who scares children. The “Bogey-Man” or “Boogie-Man” arrives at night and appears in bedrooms and at the sides of beds. In appearance the bogey often looks like the dark silhouette of a man. The bogey is called the bwg (ghost) in Welsh, bogle in Scotland, and Boggelmann in German. Among other names are bug-a-boo, boo, bugbear, bock, and boggart. The Irish puca is similar. Bogey also is another name for the DEVIL.
- Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology. p.33Bogy, bogey. is related to ‘bogle’ and ‘bug’. Earliest 19th century use as nickname for Satan. Hence the proverb bogey, the “colonel” at golf. Perhaps ultimately cognate with Puck.
Bug = Spectre from Welsh ‘bwg’, ghost.
Bogle [Archaic] spectre (c.1500) Probably from the Celtic cf. Welsh bwgwl, meaning terror.
- Weekley, Etymological Dictionary.Bogey – probaby derived from the Slavonic bog meaning god.
Other forms of sprite, spectre or goblin are:
bog-a-boo, boo (Yorkshire)
boggart, bogle (Scotland)
boggle, begest, bar-gest, boll, boman and bogey allied to boll (Northern) – meaning apparition.
- Lewis Spence. Dictionary of Occultism
Colonel Bogey was the imaginary player in golf that the other players were supposed to compete with, instead of with one another.
The scholar who did the hard yards tracking down the etymological origins of the word ‘bogey’ appears to be John Fiske who published his work around 1872. His analysis appears on pages 141-143 of the edition below:
Myths and Mythmakers: Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative Mythology by John Fiske.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1902.
He believes the “Bogie” to be identical with “Puck” and the Slavonic “Bog”, “Baga” of the Cuniform inscriptions, “Bhaga” of Old Aryan in the Sanskrit of the Vedas and “Bagaios” the Phrygian Zeus. It originally denoted an unclouded sun or noon day illumined by the solar rays.
In speaking of the origins of Buckle Street as an older trackway or road used in the sense of Bogle or Bogie, Harold Bayley says:
It was always the custom of a later race to attribute any great work of unknown origin to Bogle or the Devil, e.g., the Devil’s Dyke, and innumerable other instances.
-Harold Bayley, Archaic England pp. 518-519
and
The elemental Bog is the Slavonic term for God, and when the early translators of the Bible rendered ” terror by night ” as ” bugs by night ” they probably had spooks or bogies in their mind. In Etruria as in Egypt the bug or maybug was revered as the symbol of the Creator Bog, because the Egyptian beetle has a curious habit of creating small pellets or balls of mud. In Welsh bogel means the navel, also centre o/ a wheel, and hence Margaret or Peggy may be equated with the nave or peg of the white-rayed Marguerite or Day’s Eye?
-Bayley p.233
The Bogey Hole is a special and sacred place that needs to be approached with respect like we would a holy grotto. It is a mysterious place that obviously had connections for our forebears as a place of ancient spirits and ghosts.
It has just dawned on me that perhaps the ‘Bogey’ or ‘Bogey Man’ is none other than Major Morrissett (King Lash) himself.
A couple of other mentions of Bogey/Bogy/Bogie –
The concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English – Eric Partridge/Tom Dalzell
Bogey – verb – to swim and wash in a creek, dam etc., especially after a day’s work; ( of working dogs) to take a dip in a body of water to cool down and as a break from work. From Dharug, Australian Aboriginal language of the Sydney region
Robert Dawson’s Present State of Australia: a description of the country etc….p166 – with members of the Port Stephens tribe – ‘I at length told him we must go, when he said, “Top bit, massa, bogy,” (bathe;) and he threw himself into the water, where he enjoyed himself as long as I could stay.’
Alexander Harris’ Settlers and Convicts…p132 – ‘I went off into the bush after breakfast, and lying under a thick shady tree read all day till three o’clock in the afternoon: then had my dinner; and in the cool of the evening had a ‘bogie’(bathe) in the river.
Thanks Jen. I think your finds are more closer to the mark! Do you have a date for the ‘new Partridge Dictionary reference’? The Dawson reference is also excellent because we have ‘bogey’ recorded in Canon Carlos Stretch’s aboriginal words notebook as meaning ‘to bathe’ but he provides no source for where the word comes from. This, at least lets us know that it was in use as early the 1820s. So thanks very much for these references. Regards, Gionni
The new Partridge Dictionary was published 2006. They don’t seem to have a reference other than ’1788′ .
There is a mention of ‘bogie’ in The Historical Records of New South Wales Volume II (Grose & Paterson 1793 – 1795) p699 in the ‘Journal and Letters of Daniel Southwell’.
Daniel Southwell arrived on the HMS Sirius in 1788. He recorded a list of words used by the natives of the Port Jackson district and noted ‘bogie’ as meaning ‘to dive’.
Regards
Jen
Thanks Jen, excellent.
from the NSW Heritage Office website on NSW Ocean Baths:
http://www.nswoceanbaths.info/topics/t011.htm
Bogey Hole
“The term ‘Bogey Hole’ does not relate to any fearsome bogey man’. The term ‘Bogey’ derived from a word meaning ‘to bathe or swim’ in Dharawal, an Aboriginal language from the Sydney area.
While the Newcastle Bogey Hole was cut into rock, other bogey holes are ocean baths of the ring-of-rocks type like the Bogey Holes at Bronte, Bondi and Mollymook. The terms ‘bogey’ for swimming and ‘bogey hole’ for swimming place are still in common use in many parts of NSW and Queensland.
Scuba divers also refer to a certain sea cave in the cliffs of Jervis Bay as the Bogey Hole.”
Another English dialect meaning for ‘bogey’ is wriggle – as in swimming or dancing. In the US, there is the ‘boogie-woogie bugle man from Company B’. Boogie turns up in song lyrics from the 1920s to mean dancing. There is also (to be less polite) the schoolboy’s term for snot, ‘boogers’ or ‘bogey’, ie something long and wriggling. Boogie, like bugger – another word in the same interesting sound group – can also have a sexual meaning.
Is bogey an Aboriginal word? The Oxford English Dictionary does not record any earlier uses of bogey to mean swimming, or boogie to mean dancing prior to 1849 when it first appears in print and is thought by one writer to be ‘Aboriginal’.
bogy | bogey, n.2
Pronunciation: /ˈbəʊgɪ/
Forms: Also bogie.
Etymology: Apparently Aboriginal word.
Austral. slang.
b. A bathing-place, a bath. Also attrib. Hence as v. intr., to bathe.
1849 A. Harris Emigrant Family viii. 145 ‘Bogie,’ I suppose must be aboriginal also.‥ Its signification is a bathe.
1893 K. Mackay Out Back iv. 50, I don’t care to bogey in our drinking tank.
1928 ‘Brent of Bin Bin’ Up Country (1966) ii. 24 They‥took her for bogeys in the swimming hole.
1934 Bulletin (Sydney) 13 June 19/4 Blacks on the tidal creeks and rivers of Queensland prefer to bogey when the tide is on the ebb.
1941 S. J. Baker Pop. Dict. Austral. Slang 11 Bogie, a swim, a bath, or wash. (2) A swimming hole, a bath. Also, ‘bogiehole’, ‘bogiehouse’.
1946 F. D. Davison Dusty viii. 82 They went down for a bogey on warm days.
For ‘boogie’, the term does not appear until the 20th century in the US.
a. A party, esp. a rent party.
1917 (title of jazz piece) Boogie rag.
1929 in B. Rust Jazz Records 1897–1942 (1978) 516 We’re gonna pitch a boogie right here.
1960 P. Oliver Blues fell this Morning 163 He re-christened the [boogie-woogie] style after the ‘boogies’ or parties on the South Side.
1976 G. Oakley Devil’s Music 163 When rent day was due, you ‘pitched a boogie’, inviting the neighbours round and charging an entrance fee of perhaps a quarter and a jug of gin.
R.M.W. Dixon, Australian Aboriginal Words (OUP, 2006), p. 200, says the word is Dharuk:
bogey /’bougi/ Also bogie. [Dharuk, Sydney region, intransitive verb root bugi-, 'to bathe or dive'.] Used as a noun to mean ‘a swim’ or ‘a bathe’.
However, a search in Google Books prior to 1850 shows that ‘bougie’ is also an English term for a long thin tube or catheter used for surgical procedures. A long thin tube used for musical purposes is called a boogle or bugle.
The ‘Reel o’ Bogie’ was a Scottish term for a wild dance, with ‘bogie’ here probably meaning bogey, ie the devil. Robert Burns has a drinking song called ‘Cauld Kail in Aberdeen’ which refers to this in the refrain, eg: ‘Gie me a lass baith clean and tight,/ To dance the Reel o Bogie’. This doesn’t sound too decent….
So, my suspicion is that bogey is one of those English words which Aborigines thought was English, and English thought was Aboriginal.
Bogey is definitely derived from the Polish_Slovonic word BOG-BÓG for GOD! Specifically God of GOOD. What we are looking at is the forgotten history of POLISH BRITAIN which I have been uncovering over the decades. (With a deep satisfaction)
This is a short list of POLISH words, otherwise considered ENGLISH.
GOD, ANGEL DEVIL, LORD, LADY, WODAN,
ALBION, BRITAIN, ENGLAND, WALES, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, CORNWALL
DEALER, BAD, HILL, DALE, HUNT, HORSE,
WILTSHIRE, SANDHURST, WELLINGTON, WINTER, SYKES, STANLEY
Not a word in any British history book under 100 years of course.
Im over 65, am fully Polish_English bilingual live in Australia, and have been deep into linguistics from the age of 6 years. And Yes Australia is a Polish word.
Here is a test for you. So you think you can speak good English do you?
Then hwat ( Correct english misspelling of the original Polish WAT whhw, ie not ‘what’ <transpose) do the following words actually mean in English
GOD, WODAN, ENGLAND, WILTSHIRE, SYKES
I think you will find these words are meaningless to you. If not let me know by email.
Good luck POSSUMS.!!!!
Anthony Jeleniewski , Essendon, Australia.