Crossword-Solution: RIDI 4 letters, 13 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 5

The _ridi_ is its name: a cutty petticoat or fringe of the smoked fibre of cocoa-nut leaf, not unlike tarry string: the lower edge not reaching the mid-thigh, the upper adjusted so low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident.

The combatants were the more easy to be distinguished, because the one was stripped to the _ridi_ and the other wore a holoku (sacque) of some lively colour.

They were all soloists, did not very often join in the performance, but stood disengaged at the back part of the stage, and looked (in _ridi_, necklace, and dressed hair) for all the world like European ballet-dancers.

The _ridi_ is but a spare attire; as late as thirty years back the women went naked until marriage; within ten years the custom lingered; and these facts, above all when heard in description, conveyed a very false idea of the manners of the group.

Ten or twenty years ago it was a capital offence to raise a woman’s _ridi_; to this day it is still punished with a heavy fine; and the garment itself is still symbolically sacred.