But Lavender is more purple than blue, anyway...

If you recall hearing Peyton Manning hollering "Omaha!" while calling an audible in a football game, that's old times now. Ben Roethlisberger of the Steelers was heard using "Dilly Dilly!" as the signal to his team to change to another play recently.

Of course, what brings this all to the forefront of public attention (so we can forget about what we ought to pay attention to) is the current series of Game Of Thrones-like commercials for Bud Light beer, with a medieval court hoisting high their bottles of watered-down Budweiser and crooning "Dilly Dilly!"

So the, what does "Dilly Dilly" even mean?  Might as well talk about it, because we are certain to see and hear it again during the Super Bowl between the Eagles and the Jaguars. (Editor's note: make sure those are the teams in the big game! Don't make the same mistake as last year when we did that whole salute to the Falcons' Flight To Victory!)

The redundancy "DD" means nothing special. We used to say something was a "dilly" when it was really special, like when someone drove up in their sleek new Plymouth Fury. "It's a dilly!" someone was sure to call out as they looked for ways to get out of chipping in gas money later.  There are those who say the word derives from "delightful," which was surely applicable to Plymouths back in the day.

You might be familiar with a song that uses the words, too. The old English folk song "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)" dates back to the 17th Century. Burl Ives had a hit with it in 1949 as part of the movie soundtrack to a Walt Disney movie (everything in this world connects back to Disney) called "So Dear To My Heart," which is unknown to my heart, but I know the song well, and you can hear it right here.  Sammy Turner did a rock/soul version in 1959, and of course, Disney dragged it out again for their 217th version of "Cinderella" in 2015.

It might come as a surprise to many who think that people never got busy back in the olden days, but here are the lyrics as included in an 1805 English children's poetry book: 





Lavender blue and Rosemary green,
When I am king you shall be queen;
Call up my maids at four o'clock,
Some to the wheel and some to the rock;
Some to make hay and some to shear corn,
And you and I will keep the bed warm.

  Now, that's a dilly!