So-ho. This is the cry of sportsmen when the hare is found in her seat.
Spy. “I spy” is the usual exclamation at a well-known childish game called “Hie spy, hie!”[977]
Tailor. Johnson explains the following words of Puck in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1) thus:
“The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough.”
“The custom of crying tailor at a sudden fall backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside his chair, falls as a tailor squats upon his board.” Mr. Dyce,[978] however, adds, “it may be doubted if this explains the text.”
Tilly-vally. An exclamation of contempt, the etymology of which is uncertain. According to Douce it is a hunting phrase borrowed from the French. Singer says it is equivalent to fiddle-faddle. It occurs in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3), being used by Sir Toby: “Am not I consanguineous? am I not of her blood? Tilly-vally, lady!”
In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), the Hostess corrupts it to tilly-fally: “Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne’er tell me: your ancient swaggerer comes not in my doors.”
As a further illustration of the use of this word, Singer quotes a conversation between Sir Thomas More and his wife, given in Roper’s Life: “Is not this house, quoth he, as nigh heaven as my own? To whom she, after her accustomed homely fashion, not liking such talk, answered, Tylle-valle, Tylle-valle.”
Westward, ho. This was one of the exclamations of the watermen who plied on the Thames, and is used by Viola in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 1). Dyce[979] quotes from Peel’s “Edward I.” to illustrate the use of this word:
“Queen Elinor. Ay, good woman, conduct me to the court,
That there I may bewail my sinful life,
And call to God to save my wretched soul.
[A cry of ‘Westward, ho!’
Woman, what noise is this I hear?