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Updated: June 15, 2025
The fore-runners of the larrikin were never very sheep-like in all probability, for if one could trace his pedigree, it would in most cases be found that he is the descendant of the true British cad. But he has improved upon the ancestral pattern and become a pest of formidable characteristics and dimensions.
And what right 'ad you to arst 'er to darnce, you lop-eared rabbit?" interrupted the larrikin, raising his voice as he warmed to his subject. "I brought 'er 'ere. I paid the shillin'. Now then, you take your 'ook," he went on, pointing sternly to the door, and talking as he would to a disobedient dog. "Go on, now. Take your 'ook." The Englishman said nothing, but his jaw set ominously.
The pair had no equals in the true larrikin style, called "cass dancing", and they revolved slowly on a space the size of a dinner-plate, Ada's head on Jonah's breast, their bodies pressed together, rigid as the pasteboard figures in a peep-show. They were interrupted by a cry from Mrs Yabsley's bedroom. Jonah stopped instantly, with a look of dismay on his face.
"Ye're only kiddin'," said Chook, cheerfully; "an' wot'll 'e do ter yous?" "Me! 'E niver rouses on me. W'en 'e gits shirty, I just laugh, an' 'e can't keep it up." "Right-oh!" said Chook. "Look out fer a song an' dance nex' Sunday." About five o'clock on the following Sunday afternoon, Chook, beautifully attired in the larrikin fashion, sauntered up to the door and tried the knocker.
When Mr Bumble heard of Oliver Twist's resistance to the combined authority of Mrs Sowerberry and Charlotte and Noah Claypole, he repudiated the idea of madness which was offered as an explanation of the boy's conduct. "It isn't madness, ma'am," said Mr Bumble, "it's meat." There is the true explanation of the larrikin.
They were dressed in the height of larrikin fashion tight-fitting suits of dark cloth, soft black felt hats, and soft white shirts with new black mufflers round their necks in place of collars for the larrikin taste in dress runs to a surprising neatness.
Apart from bush terms, there are town appellations, such as 'larrikin, which means a 'rough. The word is said to have originated with an Irish policeman, who spoke of some boys who had been brought before the Melbourne Police Court as 'larriking around, instead of 'larking. To 'have a nip' is to take a 'nobbler. A white man born in Australia is a 'colonial, vulgarly a 'gum-sucker; if he was born in New South Wales, he is also a 'cornstalk. An aboriginal is always a 'black fellow. A native of Australia would mean a white man born in the colony.
She wanted to speak, to cry out that she was not so guilty as he thought, but her tongue was like a rasp. Suddenly Jonah stopped in front of her. Her stony silence had maddened him, and in a moment he was transformed into the old-time larrikin, accustomed to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The doors were opened, and the eye travelled straight into the front rooms lit with a kerosene lamp or a candle. Under the veranda at the corner the Push was gathered, the successors of Chook and Jonah, young and vicious, for the larrikin never grows old. She looked on the familiar scenes that had been a part of her life since she could remember.
Always an impertinent, interfering rascal, the spangled drongo, under the exhilarating influence of melaleuca nectar, degenerates into a blusterer. He could not under any circumstances be a larrikin; but the grateful stimulant affects his naturally high spirits, and he is more frolicsome and boisterous than ever.
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