Rattle Your Dags

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joyce Fleming, and I’m calling to ask if y’all have heard this slang expression,

Rattle your dags, and it’s spelled R-A-T-T-L-E, and then your, and then dags, D-A-G-S.

Rattle my dags?

No, rattle your dags.

Rattle your dags.

Where would I hear this?

Dags, D-A-G-S.

Is this something you’d say on a farm, in the city, at work?

Where would I hear this?

Anywhere.

Anywhere?

And would I say it to an enemy or a friend?

To anybody.

Oh.

And Joyce, where are you?

I’m in Fort Worth, Texas.

Actually, I live in North Richland Hills, which is a suburb of Fort Worth.

Right.

Okay.

Okay, so is this an expression that comes from North Texas, or would I expect to hear this?

No, no, it didn’t come from North Texas.

Want me to tell you where it came from?

Where did you pick this up?

From my husband. He’s deceased now, but he was from New Zealand.

He lived in New Zealand all of his life, and he came over here when he was 68

And took a bus tour of the United States, and I met him on the tour and got married.

That’s a nice story.

And we were married 27 years, and he died. He’s 95.

Oh, that’s a good long haul.

Mm—

-huh.

The first time he said it to me, I didn’t have any clue what he was talking about,

But it sounded funny to me, so I questioned him, and he told me the origination of it.

When was that? What happened when he said that to you?

Well, he meant for me to hurry up.

In other words, rattle your dags means to hurry.

Well, now, Joyce, did he give you any idea about it?

Yeah, well, he explained it to me, and I’ll explain it to you if you want me to, if you can’t figure it out.

I thought it was cute when I found out how it came about.

When sheep, sometimes if they’re not shaved around their little bottom,

When they poo, it gets on the dags around, you know, on the wool.

Well, they call them dags, D-A-G-S.

And it hardens in the sun, and so when they run, it rattles, you know,

Because they’ll have more than one, and it’ll rattle,

They clink together, and so the fact that they’re running,

They say, you know, they say, rattle your dags when they want you to,

A person wants you to hurry and get somewhere.

That’s what they say.

So the sheep, if we use a colloquial expression, have dingleberries on their hind ends.

Right, right, right.

They become so hard that when they run it sounds like gravel clanking.

Right. That’s exactly right.

Yeah, I’m looking here, and I’m seeing in a variety of dictionaries

That it’s also used in Australia.

It’s more common in New Zealand.

Interestingly enough, the term has kind of gone from referring to dingleberries,

Which is probably not a very nice thing to call somebody.

No, they call them dags.

Dags, that’s right.

Yeah, I like dags better.

Short for daglocks, kind of like dreadlocks.

Right, right.

But it can also mean an eccentric person or someone who’s a character

Or someone who has a good sense of humor.

So the slang term has kind of taken all these different roads,

And it’s popped up with different meanings here and there.

Well, see, I’ve never heard of the other meanings.

That’s the only one I ever knew.

Rally dags, Martha! We’re going out!

This has been a fantastic call.

Thank you so much for giving us a ring.

You’re welcome.

All right, bye-bye.

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