"Well Met" - What! It's combat?

[tripleblessed]

It has been noted that the "good to meet you" meaning of this phrase is known predominantly in the southern US. It might,therefore, be relevant to remind ourselves that musical anthropologists recovered lost songs and repaired lyrics, clearly mangled in the Isles, by spending time in the Appalachian Mountains. Around the beginning of the last century they found pockets of folk still speaking virtually unchanged Elizabethan English, and handing down songs carefully preserved verbatim. This usage may be a remnant of earlier parallel meanings, as suggested above. While some in the UK have said that if "you lot" were so intent on pretending to be Scots or British, we shouldn't have left.This completely ignores the fact that most had no desire to leave. Many, many, were forcibly shipped, and billed for their passage. Many were put on ships with deliberately insufficient food, and many starved on the way. Children were shipped to mine and factory owners as free labor. Prisoners of war were sold as slaves. Some left, yes, of their own volition. Because the system had completely disenfranchised the lower classes to the point there was nothing for them where they were no matter what they did. Common land that fed and housed people for centuries was simply taken by "gentry" with no recourse for those on the bottom. Dispossessed people often cling to any scraps and shreds of "home" they can, and try to forget the pain.

Or it might be something else altogether.