I woke up one day with the words to an old song running through my sleep-muddled brain. “Mairzy doats and dozy doats/And liddle lamzy divey/A kiddley divey too,/Wooden you?” Boy, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore!
If you’re old like me, you might remember that song. I heard it often when I was a little kid in the mid-1940s. It seems to make no sense at all, but a little later in the song, there’s a translation: “If the words sound queer and funny to your ear,/A little bit jumbled and jivey,/Sing ‘Mares eat oats and does eat oats/And little lambs eat ivy./A kid’ll eat ivy, too. Wouldn’t you?’”
That really clears it up, right? They’re talking about horses, sheep and baby goats eating oats and ivy! Perfectly logical. And good advice: If you want to get rid of poison ivy in your yard, get a goat. After all, “a kid’ll eat ivy!”And what a great topic for a song lyric! Who needs songs about love and marriage?
Well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon I was humming the “Hut Sut Song”; remember that? “Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit,/Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.” Hard to beat those for classic lyrics!
Again, sometime later in the song, there’s an explanation. “Now the Rawlson is a Swedish town, the rillerah is a stream./The brawla is the boy and girl, The Hut-Sut is their dream.” I guess that’s Swedish, but who cares?
My dad used to sing, “Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care/Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care/Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care/My master’s gone away.” I never understood what that was about. He also sang, “Chickery chick, cha-la, cha-la/Check-a-la romey in a bananika/Bollika, wollika, can’t you see/Chickery chick is me?”
Boy, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore!
Some of you might remember Arthur Godfrey, “the old redhead.” He had a very popular song in the ’40s called “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch.” Here’s just the chorus: “Ooooh, I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch,/an onion patch, an onion patch./I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch/and all I do is cry all day./Boo hoo, boo hoo./The air ís so strong it takes my breath away/Peee-you!/I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch,/oh won’t you come and play with me?”
When I was a kid, there was a popular cartoon character who’d show up every couple of weeks in the old Grand Theater in Oconto Falls, Woody Woodpecker. The great bandleader, Kay Kyser, had a popular recording of “The Woody Woodpecker Song” in the late ’40s. It featured Woody’s trademark laughing song and a bunch of nonsense lyrics: “Ho-ho-ho ho ho, ho-ho-ho ho ho/Oh, that’s the Woody Woodpecker song/Ho-ho-ho ho ho, ho-ho-ho ho ho/Yeah, he’s a-peckin’ it all day long.”
Yup. They just don’t write ‘em like that anymore!
Lots of today’s popular rap songs probably have lyrics that are nonsensical, too. I’ll never know because I can’t understand them. But I understand mairzy doats and dozy dotes!
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