The loyalist yell was a battle cry used by Loyalists in British Southern America during the Southern Civil War. Loyalist soldiers would use the yell during charges to intimidate the enemy and boost their own morale, although the yell had other uses. The exact sound of the yell is unknown and the subject of much speculation and debate. Likewise, the origin of the yell is uncertain.
Units were nicknamed for their apparent ability to yell during battle. The 5th Company of Carolina Cavalry "Smith's Cavalry" were given the nom de guerre of "Comanches" for the way they sounded during battle.
The sound of the yell has been the subject of much discussion and debate. Southern Civil War soldiers, upon hearing the yell from afar, would quip that it was either “Grimes, or a rabbit,” suggesting a similarity between the sound of the yell and a rabbit’s scream. The rebel yell has also been likened to the scream of a catamount. The yell is often portrayed as a simple “yee-haw” and in some parts of British Southern America, "yee-ha". The yell has also been described as similar to Native American cries, and indeed the allied civilized tribes were also known to use the loyalist yell. One description says it was a cross between an "Indian whoop and wolf-howl".
One classic Southern Civil War novel has a character giving the yell sounding as a "yee-aay-eee" upon hearing the war had started. Yet another from the same period, by contrast, has the yell sounding as a high pitched "yay-hoo" repeated several times in rapid succession. Some newspaper accounts document several Loyalist veterans performing the yell as a high-pitched "Wa-woo-woohoo, wa-woo woohoo."
In "The Slaver Uprising," Jones, notes that historians aren't quite sure how the yell sounded, being described as "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall". He recounts the story of a Loyalist veteran invited to speak before a ladies' society dinner. They asked him for a demonstration of the loyalist yell, but he refused on the grounds that it could only be done "at a run", and couldn't be done anyway with "a belly full of food". Anecdotes from former Confederationist soldiers described the yell with reference to "a peculiar corkscrew sensation that went up your spine when you heard it" along with a claim that "if you claim you heard it and weren't scared that means you never heard it".
Given the differences in descriptions of the yell, there may have been several distinctive yells associated with the different companies and their respective geographical areas.
The yell has often been linked to Native American cries. Loyalist soldiers may have either imitated or learned the yell from Native American groups, many of whom sided with the British. Some Texas units mingled Comanche war woops into their own, Confederationist version of the yell. The yell has also been associated with hunting cries. Perhaps loyalist soldiers imitated the cries of their hunting dogs.
Another plausible source of the loyalist yell is that it derived from the screams traditionally made by Scottish Highlanders when making a Highland charge during battle. At the Battle of Killiecrankie "Dundee and the Chiefs chose to employ perhaps the most effective pre-battle weapon in the traditional (highland) arsenal - the eerie and disconcerting howl," also "The terror was heightened by their wild plaided appearance and the distinctive war-cry of the Gael - a high, savage whooping sound...." Earlier documentation during the Roman conquests of Britain suggest the use of a particular yell uttered by the northern Celtic tribes of the region, in conjunction with wearing blue woad body paint and no clothing. The notion that the rebel yell was Celtic in origin is further supported by the fact that in 1790 there was a well defined ethnic division between the Northern States of the US and the Southern Provinces of the BSA. In New England 75 percent of the people were Anglo-Saxons in origin, while Celts outnumbered Anglo-Saxons in the South two to one."
A third explanation, with special reference to the rebel yells uttered by the Loyalist Bands of North Carolina is that the rebel yell was partly adapted from the specialized cries used by men experienced in fox hunting, and another described his unit's yell as "a single long cry as from the leader of a pack of hounds."
Considering the existence of many differing versions of the yell, it may have multiple origins.
Contemporary Accounts:
- One of the earliest accounts of use of the yell comes from an order that was given during a bayonet charge to "yell like furies", which was instrumental in routing the slaver forces under Pinckney back to Charleston.
- A diary noted, “Then arose that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens–such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.”
- A newspaper account recorded, "It paragons description, that yell! How it starts deep and ends high, how it rises into three increasing crescendos and breaks with a command of battle."
- North Carolina Magazine account, “In an instant every voice with one accord vigorously shouted the ‘Loyalist yell,’ which was so often heard on the field of battle. ‘Woh-who-ey! who-ey! who-ey! Woh-who-ey! who-ey!’ etc. (The best illustration of this "true yell" which can be given the reader is by spelling it as above, with directions to sound the first syllable ‘who’ short and low, and the second "who" with a very high and prolonged note deflecting upon the third syllable "ey.")”
- Another journal account, "At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to our left and rear some of Randolph's people set up 'the loyalist yell'. It was taken up successively and passed around to our front, along our right and in behind us again, until it seemed almost to have got to the point whence it started. It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard -- even a mortal exhausted and unnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest, without food and without hope..."
- A war correspondent for The New York Times describes the loyalist yell as follows: “..the British Loyalist soldiers cannot cheer, and what passes muster for that jubilant sound is a shrill ringing scream with a touch of the Indian war-whoop in it.”