Avast and Bejabbers 

From My Journal 

    Once again I find myself explaining an expression I’ve used. 
    Speaking of looking it up, I would tell you to do that with the “avast and bejabbers” thing, but unless you have access to some very special reference material you would not be able to find much. 
    Some people would say the bejabbers is a mild oath, but according to my information it came about like this: Sean Avast and Neal Bejabbers were a standup comedy team who played, during the late 18th century, in and around Ireland and Scotland. Being that most of the population in those countries lived in seacoast towns these two clowns became famous, and well known even, to the seafaring population of a large part of the world. It was common to hear some sailor saying, while his ship was sailing up Belfast Lough, “I wonder if Avast and Bejabbers will be playing when we get to port.” Usually he didn’t get an answer, as after two years at sea hunting whales, he was probably talking to a mast, a coil of rope, or something else equally uninterested in Avast and Bejabbers. 
    As time went on and the funny duo became more and more referenced in casual conversations, the phrase “avast and bejabbers’ began to be used for any and all exclamations---good, bad, or indifferent. The most famous use of the phrase, according to Funkstien and Wagnellsky, was at the hanging of the infamous pirate Jeremiah Bleep, otherwise known as Blood-and-Guts Bleep. When they put the rope around his neck he looked around and said, “Avast and bejabbers, they’re really gonna hang me,” which they proceeded to do. 
    At this time the phrase was still not accepted by everyone, especially the clergy, who were prominent at Bleeps hanging. Bleep was not the first person to publicly use a normally censored phrase, but years later when the TV censors were looking for an appropriate word to cover up words that needed to be censored, they, tongue in cheek, picked “bleep” for that name. Uncle Jeremiah would be so proud. How Bleep got the nick name of Blood-and-Guts is another story.