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She wore a dark, shapeless, ungirt robe covered with patches and stains.

It is a truth recognised in The Song of the Ungirt Runners, Charles Hamilton Sorley’s poetic hymn to those “who do not run for prize”, but who run “because they like it”.

He would have to do it in the felon’s way “ungirt, unshod, bareheaded, in his bare shirt as if he were hanged on a gallows.”

And St. Laurence ungirt his robe, and giving his girdle to the sacristan, bade him show it in proof of what he told.

It is a moot point how far the extremely loose and ungirt character of this style, which sometimes, and indeed often, reaches sheer slovenliness and solecism, was intentional.