It was his way to draw after him a throng of demented women, so that the poor, draggle-tailed creatures forgot husband and bairns and followed him among the mosses.

All kinds of sinister- looking alleys, narrow yards, dirty courts, and smoky back streets surround it; much drinking is done in each; and a chorus of noise from lounging men in their shirt sleeves, draggle-tailed women without bonnets, and weird little youngsters, given up entirely to dirt, treacle, and rags, is constantly kept up in them.

"It will be better," said the author of The Traveller and the Deserted Village, laughing indeed, but in good earnest, "to relinquish the draggle-tail muses.

dowdy, drab, slut, malkin^, slattern, sloven, slammerkin^, slammock^, slummock^, scrub, draggle-tail, mudlark^, dust-man, sweep; beast.

[of people] unkempt, sluttish, dowdy, draggle-tailed; uncombed. unscoured^, unswept^, unwiped^, unwashed, unstrained, unpurified^; squalid; lutose^, slammocky^, slummocky^, sozzly^. nasty, coarse, foul, offensive, abominable, beastly, reeky, reechy^; fetid &c 401.

There is a constant coming in and going out of peasants with dripping sabots, of dogs with wet paws, and draggle-tailed hens with miry feet; geese, and even pigs, not unfrequently venture inside, and have a good walk round before their presence is noticed and they are treated to quotations from Rabelais, enforced with the broomstick.

Look on the Common: who are there amusing themselves on a fine day, unless it be your Duke Do-nothing, Earl Out-at-elbows, Duchess Draggle-tail, and others of that happy class?