girldie larks

Australian Slang

early Strine juvile dinquent tea nature, whose scandalous career has until now been hushed up and whose evil character whitewashed by her sentimental, over-indulgent parents. Girldie Larks is now known to have been a psychopathic thief and tormentor of dumb animals. An associate of Little Red, Robin and other hoods, she made the lives of our forebears intolerable by her continual raids into their territory - tresspassing, stealing food, and destroying property. (Her special victims appear to have been the upright and popular Behr family - Father, Mother, Baby and the silent and rather less well knownCammon Behr. Her savage depredations continued for some years untileventually, his patience exhausted, Cammon cried, 'A little Behr willfix her!' and he then cut out her heart and threw it down a well - this being the appropriate course of action in those days when there were so many wells about. A typical example of Girldie Larks' vicious cruelty is immortalized in the following old Strine folk song: 'Girldie Larks, Girldie Larks, where have you been? I beat up London and vented my spleen, And then I cummome menai harrased the Behrs; I yay tarp their porridge and bro karp their chairs. I savaged the beds and I tordan the fences. And frightened a little mouse out of its senses')