What is a higgledy-piggledy (double dactyl), and what are some good ones?

David Karr <karr@cs.cornell.edu> wrote:
> I believe the item you posted is called a "clerihew":  8 lines of
> double dactyl, rhyme scheme ABCDEFGD, making a humorous statement
> about some historical person.

Actually, you're both wrong. The poem is called a higgledy-piggledy. A
clerihew is a four-line poem with rhyme scheme AABB, no meter. A
higgledy-piggledy is an eight-line poem with double dactyl meter and
rhyme scheme ABCDEFGD, with the first line being a nonsense phrase
(usually "higgledy-piggledy"), the second line being the name of a
famous person, and the remainder being a statement about that person.
Clerihews also tend to be about famous people, and both clerihews and
higgledy-piggledies tend to be funny.

A double dactyl is a six-syllable phrase with accents on the first and
fourth syllables. "Higgledy-piggledy" is a double dactyl. Single-word
double dactyls (like "schistosomiasis" or "gubernatorial") are highly
regarded in higgledy-piggledies.

-- Jonathan S. Haas <positron@eecs.umich.edu>

I stand corrected.  In that case, Games magazine has published quite
a number of *higgledy-piggledies* over the years (they may have
published some clerihews as well, I don't remember seeing any but
can't think where else I would have seen the word).

For example (as printed in Games many years ago, but I believe from
an even earlier source):

Higgledy piggledy
Benjamin Harrison
Twenty-third president
Was, and as such
Served between Clevelands [Editor: "Clevlands" in the original] and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncracy
Didn't do much.

I notice that the 4th and 8th lines aren't actually double dactyls
(the last two syllables of that meter are omitted).

> Single-word
> double dactyls (like "schistosomiasis" or "gubernatorial") are highly
> regarded in higgledy-piggledies.

Like "idiosyncracy"?  :-)

-- David A. Karr <karr@cs.cornell.edu>

   Well, higgledy-piggledies *are* also known as double-dactyls, even though
the term technically applies to the length of (most of) the lines.

   I'll try and remember to bring in the name of the definitive reference on
the topic; I don't have it with me at the moment.  For now, I'll just add
that I first learned about this verse form from one of Willard Espy's
_Almanac[s] of Words at Play_, which included this rather harsh one (I
forget the author):

Higgledy-piggledy
Edward M. Kennedy
Quite unaccountably
Drove in a stream.

Pleas of amnesia,
Incomprehensible,
Possible shattered
Political dream.

   As I understand it, the platonic ideal of a higgledy-piggledy (besides
having the strictures Jonathan and David noted) has a single double-dactylic
word filling the sixth line.  There are, of course, plenty of variations,
but I like the stricter requirement of placing the long word there.
   (Also, the nonsense phrase at the beginning is almost always two dactylic
words, like "higgledy piggledy" or "huffery whuffery" or "jiggery pokery.")

   My best higgledy-piggledy:

/*
 * Higgledy-piggledy
 * Ritchie and Kernighan
 * Wrote the definitive
 * Book about C.
 *
 * If I were grading it
 * (Alphanumerically)
 * I'd give the language at
 * Least a high B.
 */

-- Jed Hartman <logos@cathay.esd.sgi.com>

No! A clerihew -- a form created by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, and named
for, obviously, his middle name -- is quite irregular in its metrical
structure. Here are a few samples:

The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.

What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
If anybody calls
Say I am designing St. Paul's."

These are all by Bentley himself. Apparently, he began them while an
undergraduate, perhaps as mnemonics to help him remember historical data
[although I doubt that]. He is best known today for having written the
great classical mystery novel, <Trent's Last Case>.

Double-dactyls were invented in the later 1950's or early 1960's by an
American humorist whose name escapes me at the moment. Of his own
contributions to the genre, my favorite is:

Higgledy piggledy
Richard Plantagenet
Sailed off for France
Full of OEdipal scorn

Erotogenesis
Can't be all mythic
If mother still makes it
With Bertrand de Born

The requirements are the quatrain form, the use of a name in the second
line of the first stanza, and the use of a single word as the whole of
the first line of the second stanza. Both the name and the one-word-line
have to be, of course, dactylic dimeter -- hence the "double dactyl."
I forgot, as you see already, that the first line of the first stanza
also must be a nonsense double -- "higgledy piggledy," "Omigosh, omigosh."
The latter is one from a response announcing the winner of a double dactyl
contest in <Games> a number of years ago.

-- Frank Young <tipcat@wam.umd.edu>

I read back around 1970 (unfortunately, 23 years is too far back for me
to dredge up either a source or names :-(   ) in an article that two poets
had "invented" a new poetic form called "the double dactyl" (of this I am
certain!!) They cited all the rules which were given by Jonathan in his
first followup. Plus one rule that no-one mentioned but all of the examples
contained! i.e. at least one line must be a one-word line (all in the
meter called "double dactyl"). Since, as Jonathan pointed out, all must
start with a nonsense line, and that that line is usually "Higgledy-Piggledy"
the form probably gradually adopted that name. I am certain, however, that
in the original article they were called "double dactyls". One I remember
(almost) from the original article is:

Higgledy-Piggledy
Hans Christian Andersen [Editor: "Anderson" in the original]
sat with four tow-headed
boys on a shelf
Hoping that [something-I-forget] would
Characteristically
help him in keeping his
Hans to himself

(note that HCA was gay).

I remember all this specifically because I wrote one myself at the time
which I still remember (I was at college, and into The Lord of The Rings
at the time):

Jiggery-Pockery
Meriadoc [Editor: "Meriodac" in the original]! Brandybuck!
Names of renown in the
Land called the Shire
Saved they the world when they
Unsurreptitiously
Helped Frodo cast the One
Ring in the Fire!

-- Frank O'Neil <frank@cetia.fr>

[ Editor: from a 1996 thread "Higgledy Piggledy": ]

Woody Brison <william.w.brison@den.mmc.com> wrote:
> Fashion and Social scene,  (nonsensical?)
> Jacqueline [Editor: "Jaqueline" in the original] Kennedy
> Lived in the White House,
   (missing a syllable here, tacking on an "and" would fix it)
> Wore the best clothes.
>
> Got a new residence,
> Made new acquaintances,
> Finally found happiness,
> As we suppose.
>
> It doesn't seem to be too hard to do.  Making it say
> something good, lovely, praiseworthy or sensical seems
> a little harder.

Not a bad first effort by any means. Remember the bonus for
single-word double dactyls though.

Here's one I came up with yesterday, although it's
a little bit out of date... you might be able to dredge it up
and reuse it in the year 2000.

Higgledy Piggledy,
Patrick Buchanan, the
G.O.P. candidate
Making the news,

Egomaniacal,
Ultraconservative,
Causing a lot of us
G.O.P. blues.

-- Jonathan S. Haas <jhaas@microsoft.com>

One I heard long ago and have always remembered:

Higgeldy Piggeldy
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Write piano pieces
For handspans like wings

Few, pianistically
Can, realistically
Digitalistically
Plan the damn things!

-- Rodney Kinney <kinney@nephthys.cgd.ucar.edu>, January 1994

In article <mpomlf6@zuni.esd.sgi.com>,
Jed Hartman <logos@cathay.esd.sgi.com> wrote:
>   I'll try and remember to bring in the name of the definitive
>reference on the topic; I don't have it with me at the moment.

I remember reading somewhere that it's bad form to follow up on one's
own articles.  Unlike Jas. Hook, however, I find myself occasionally
obliged to indulge in bad form...

I'm told that *the* book on the subject is _Jiggery-Pokery: A
Compendium of Double-Dactyls_.  That's: _Jiggery-Pokery_, by Hecht and
Hollander, jam-packed quite full of their elegant wit (sorry; I know
naught else, bibliographically, 'bout that there book or just when it
was writ).  (well, okay, so my meter's slightly off and my diction's a
little stilted.  We all have flaws.  ("...and mine is being wicked."
--the Duke))

Ahem.  Anyway, that book apparently (I haven't actually read it) claims
that the first appearance of the higpig (my word, not theirs) form was
in _Esquire_ in 1966.

Corrections to my earlier article:  In _An Almanac of Words at Play_
(my very favorite book of wordplay, far superior imo to _The Joy of
Lex_ and other such books), entry for 25 January, Willard Espy writes:

     The first line of a higgledy-piggledy is usually double-dactyl
     nonsense; the second line, a double-dactyl name; the sixth, a
     one-word double dactyl; the third, fifth, and seventh, any sort of
     double dactyl; and the fourth and eighth, rhyme lines.

     Thus:

     Edward M. Kennedy
     -----------------
     Tiddely Quiddely
     Edward M. Kennedy
     Quite unaccountably
     Drove in a stream.

     Pleas of amnesia
     Incomprehensible
     Possibly shattered
     Political dream.
        --Leonard Miall

     The Lower Criticism
     -------------------
     Higgledy-piggledy
     Dorothy Richardson
     Wrote a huge book with her
     Delicate muse.

     Where (though I hate to seem
     Uncomplimentary)
     Nothing much happens and
     Nobody screws.
        --John Hollander

Here's one more from another source, by E. William Seaman:

Higgledy-piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,

Finally answered with
Oversimplicity
"Here's my Fifth Symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, DUM!"

-- Jed Hartman <logos@cathay.esd.sgi.com>, January 1994