That being said, I am reminded this week of one of the earliest verbal jokes that I can recall from my childhood. This week's reminder comes courtesy of the death notices for Fess Parker.
There was a line in the ballad "The Legend of Davy Crockett" that always cracked me up, once I got it. See if you can pick out the gem from this verse:
Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Lived in the woods where he knew every tree;
Killed him a b'ar when he was only three.
Davy
Davy Crockett
King of the wild frontier.
OK, it doesn't take that much to amuse a nine year old kid.
3 comments:
well, i'll agree puns are the lowest form of humor.... but for the life of me i can't find a pun in the song, except for maybe "b'ar" which i don't know what is being punned there, what other than bear could be meant.... i actually clicked on to see what you had to say about the health care bill passing, but maybe i have beaten the punch....
My apologies for the slight misdirection. I didn't really say this verse contained a pun. Turns out this was merely a verbal joke in which one is fooled if one believes there was a grammatical error in the ballad. "Killed him a "b'ar" when HE was only three." Who is the "HE"? One is drawn toward assuming the HE is Davy. But how could Davy kill a bear at age three? Turns out the joke was that the grammar was correct. The "HE" referred to the closest noun or pronoun; and that was the bear. So, Davy killed a bear when the bear was only three. But the composer of the ballad phrases it so that we think Davy heroic, not ordinary.
this is why we need to have a language like ancient greek or latin: all those endings clear that stuff up .... admittedly i never knew this, and so now my thoughts on the song are a bit like the child's who realizes the favorite uncle is picking on his heroic father figure. don't like the composer now at all.
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