[Ann Drysdale]

And I believe that Hecht also required as many foreign languages as possible to appear in the piece, thereby paying due reverence to the supremacy of macaronic verse. He played a blinder - and By Goliard, he won! Double Dactyl indeed!


Jiggery Pokery!
Hechtus Antonius
Made a ridiculous
Fistful of rules

Raising two fingers to
Metrical specialists -
Ultraconventional
Farcical fools!

And Hey! That's us, folks! The words Petard and Hoist come to mind...

[George Simmers]

Spookily nookily
M. Ahmadinejad
Looks very butch
In those open-neck shirts

(Not, though, at home where he
Gender-transgressively
Wears cocktail dresses and
Shamelessly flirts).

[Susan d.S.]

Here is one from the master, Hecht:

Higgeldy-piggeldy
Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Softly complained to the
Heavenly host,

"Buckminster Fuller says
Dodecahedronals
Carry stress better than
Lintel and post"

And from Hollander:

Higgeldy-piggeldy
Tristram of Lyonesse
Gave up the ghost to la
Chanson des Anges,

Cheating, at once, of his
Corporeality
Ysolt Mains-blanches; also
Ysolt, Blancmange*

i.e. the other Ysolt

[Roger Slater]

George, your "But" to kick off S2 ruins the dactyl, but with a tweak that's a winner.

I figured I'd try a tribute to the Wendy Cope exemplar, though she coyly withholds dactyls from her name:


Wittily ditttily
Wendily Copily
Writes so amusingly
Please listen up:

Coffee may spout from you
Latte-nasalically.
Plan to read Wendy Cope?
Put down your cup!

[Chris O'Carroll]

Actually, you could turn Cope's name into a double dactyl by appending her title: Wendy Cope, OBE

[Susan McLean]

Or by making her Wendia Copia.

Susan

[George Simmers]

Chinkety chunkety
Benedict Cumberbatch
Landed the part of a
Baker Street sleuth.

Much better him than some
Sexagenarian,
Who would have been far too
Long in the tooth.

***

Tinkerty Tonkety
Benedict Pontifex
Preaches religion and
Praises its joys,

Telling a gathering
Interdiocesan,
'Feel life's delight but keep
Off little boys.'

[Roger Slater]

Hoitily, toitily,
Catherine Middleton,
Duchess of Cambridge, said,
"Wasn't it shabby

Having to speak my vows
Unphotogenically
There in that dump they call
Westminster Abbey?"

[Mary Moore]

Rodger, The fourth line of each stanza of Hecht's Double Dactyl has to consist of a dactyl and a single accent ( _ .. _ ).

Mary

[Roger Slater]

Are you sure? I thought it was enough that those lines aren't double dactyls. At any rate, that's what the Staggers instructions say, and I see no reason not to use a feminine rhyme in those lines so long as the double dactyl is avoided.