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Haway / Ha'Way / Howay / Ho'way The Lads - Origin?

Isn’t it generally accepted that the origin is in the phrase ‘Have way’ meaning ‘You go on ahead of me’ or ‘You take right of way on the road’?
 

I am impressed with the erudite attempts regarding the etymological origins of the word 'Haway'. I hadn't thought about it before, apart from the grammatically incorrect use of the apostrophe which I find, (like others posted here), totally irritating. My assumption has always been that it was derived simply from the addition of an 'h' to the word 'away' so that 'Away the lads' for instance might be loosely paraphrased as 'come on the lads '. Maybe this is too simplistic. Further to the colloquial use of the word 'choss', I think that this is probably a corruption of 'choice' meaning something like 'the best' or 'excellent'. At school in Seaham in the 1950's the comparative-superlative use of the description went 'choss'; 'cholla'; and 'git cholla as owt' I seem to recall.
 
HAWAY (SAFC) ! Howay (NUFC)

Very simple really, always has been always will be. Just like County Durham (SOTT/NOTT) is our County !
Cheers, HTL with three A’s n FTM !
 
So we invented it, honed it then gave them the shite version we didn't want.
 
During the Cramlington riots of 1865 it is reported that someone says "Howay lads, let's get the bastards".

So it clearly predates football in the region by some way. There may be earlier references.

When did deep mining with cages etc start in the region? If there are references further back than 1820's then it has to be doubtful that the mining use is the source, they were just using a term already in common parlance?
 
Can someone with history between Sunderland & Newcastle about who said Ha’Way versus Newcastle’s Howay first and when did this happen? Is there a story behind it?
 
A guy wrote a book on regional divisions which included dialect. You can probably still get it somewhere. You’ll have to do some searching on it though as can’t remember what it’s called
 
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