Lydia the Tattooed Lady Lydia the Tattooed Lady "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" is a 1939 song written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen. It first appeared in the Marx Brothers movie "At the Circus" (1939) and became one of Groucho Marx's signature tunes. The complex lyrics by Harburg – with clever rhymes such as "Lydia/encyclopedia" and "Amazon/pajamas on" – were inspired by W. S. Gilbert. Harburg made many contemporary references to topical personalities such as Grover Whalen, who opened the 1939 New York World's Fair. Among the items, persons, and scenes tattooed on Lydia's body are the Battle of Waterloo (on her back), "The
Lydia Koidula Lydia Koidula Lydia Emilie Florence Jannsen, ( – ), known by her pen name Lydia Koidula, was an Estonian poet. Her sobriquet means 'Lydia of the Dawn' in Estonian. It was given to her by the writer Carl Robert Jakobson. She is also frequently referred to as "Koidulaulik" – 'Singer of the Dawn'. In Estonia, like elsewhere in Europe, writing was not considered a suitable career for a respectable young lady in the mid-nineteenth-century. Koidula's poetry and her newspaper work for her populist father, Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819–1890) remained anonymous. In spite of this, she was a major literary figure,