'Driggledy-Draggledy'

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 3, 6 August 1908, Page 9

'Driggledy-Draggledy '

A learned bacteriologist has lately been sending cold shivers up and down the spines of some people by a catalogue of the micrococci and the macrococei, and the lepthorices, and the spiromonas, and the streptococci, and the other fearfully and wonderfully named wild beasts that were picked up in the streets of Auckland by a lady's bedraggled skirt that had made overtures to them on a muddy day. - They remind one of Foote's small gentry, the Picninnies and the Joblillies and the Garyulies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button on top. The old Roman poets imagined, in the mermaid, a beautiful maiden, the glory of whose intolerable loveliness above ended in the dishonor of a very fishy fish below. And fashion, with its long skirts (not yet quite abandoned), decrees that women's attire, resplendent above, shall end in a foul trap or trawl for the capture (on wet days), and transfer to our homes, of myriad pestiferous microscopic enemies of our kind. T. E. Brown strikes off the situation in one of his recently published dialect poems : 'Bless me, the way she had with her clothes! Ine slackin and tautin', and luffin', and dippin', And mppety-nappcty, trappin' and trippin', And a hitch to starboard,. and a hitch to port, And a driggledy-draggledy all through the dirt!' So end all the finery—the frills and laces and furbelows (we are a bit uncertain as to the terminology)—in ' a driggledydraggledy all through the dirt!'