WW 1 US Army Slang: When the Ghost Walks?

[world war I nerd]

I recently picked up this WW I era postcard, which reads:

 

"WE'RE HAPPY WHEN THE GHOST WALKS"

 

I think it's a reference to soldiers receiving their monthly pay.

 

But does anyone know how that phrase came to be synonymous with the U.S. Army's payday during the Great War and when that phrase first came into use?

 

Guesses and opinions, as well as actual facts are all welcome.

 

Thanks for looking ...

[BEAST]

I never heard of this either, but it appears to be slang from the English stage. https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/25/messages/473.html

 

It's payday and the all salaries will be paid; said to have originally been a 19th-century British theatrical expression. A company doing _Hamlet_ had been paid for a month or so. When during a performance Hamlet exclaimed "Perchance 'twill walk again," the actor playing the ghost answered from the wings, "No, I'll be damned if the ghost walks any more until our salaries are paid." That night the salaries were finally paid.

From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins", Revised and Expanded Edition_ by Robert Hendrickson

[world war I nerd]

I never would have guessed that the phrase originated with England's national bard, i.e. Shakespeare.

 

I Googled it and got nothing … Thanks Beast!

 

I wonder when it first became an idiom used by U.S. troops.

[BEAST]

I never would have guessed that the phrase originated with England's national bard, i.e. Shakespeare.

 

I Googled it and got nothing … Thanks Beast!

 

I wonder when it first became an idiom used by U.S. troops.

I have not yet found another reference to it being used by the Army, but I did find it in a 1916 edition of The Federal Employee

 

"The old stuffy office, the Government office,

The place where you bid your ambitions goodbye.

 

0 those flat chested houses, each just like the other,

All alike on the street just as far as you see ;

You have to be sober to find your own cover,

And identify yours by the fit of the key.

I joyfully welcome the coming of payday,

When the ghost walks around with the scads and the bones;

But the butcher, the baker, the loan shark and faker

Get the very last sou, not a cent is my own.

 

The old Civil Service, the ossified service,

With payroll secure but so hopelessly small."

[scmcgeorge]

When the Ghost walks is pretty obscure, more common were "when the eagle screams' or "When the eagle SH-ts " Steve McG

[littlewilly]

Believe it or not, when I first got to Vietnam, our company First Sergeant used that term a couple times. We had no idea what he was talking about. I have had that card too for a bunch of years now. Bought it as a reminder of "Top." Have only seen 3 or 4 others. MHJ

[cwnorma]

I think the slang "the ghost walks" was more common along the east coast, especially around concentrations of theater/vaudeville/minstrel performers.

 

I always find it fascinating how the great mixing bowl of the military can turn local slang into nation-wide memes,

 

One of my favorite examples is "chow." Originally adopted by Soldiers, Sailors and Marines stationed in the American west and exposed to Chinese laborers and cooks, or making ports of call in China in the 1880-1900s as in; "let's go get chow (mien}" -- Chow was adopted after WW1 by Purina when they wanted to market their horse feed to the Army. Chow came full circle when the D-FAC soldiers no longer wanted their place of work to be called the "chow-hall" "I don't make animal food!" they would protest. I sometimes tried to explain that was exactly backward, even mildly racist (chow having its root in Chinese food) and a military tradition--but you can imagine how well that conversation went down...

[world war I nerd]

Thanks to everybody for your comments. This has been both an interesting and an illuminating discussion about an unusual piece of military (and apparently civilian) slang.