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Wednesday 12 February 2014

Puff the Magic Dragon

This song always bothered me. This lovely song seemed just plain wrong, and far, far too sad. I always instinctively felt there was something missing.
And apparently, there was.
The original poem had a verse that did not make it into the song. In it, Puff found another child and played with him after returning. Neither Yarrow nor Lipton remember the verse in any detail, and the paper that was left in Yarrow's typewriter in 1958 has since been lost.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1276
Before I found this out, here's the verse I composed myself, a long time ago, as a child.
My song is nearly finished.
All good things have their ends.
But there are new beginnings,
And dragons find new friends.
Puff's new friend's Suzy Alice,
They laugh and have great fun.
For Suzy's great-grandfather
Was Jackie Paper's son.
Consider it released under the Creative Commons license for anyone else who wants to sing a more complete version.

A slightly variant form of this appeared in the comments at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/some-girls-have-thing-for-horses.html

As far as I'm aware, the lyrics of the original verses, though not this one are (C) Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow and no challenge to the current copyright owners is intended.
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2 comments:

  1. CGHillWednesday, February 12, 2014 12:04:00 pm

    The US children's TV series Captain Kangaroo used to play a cartoon -- actually a few dozen still drawings -- behind "Puff," and in their version, there was a new kid to play with the lonely dragon at the end.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownTuesday, October 12, 2021 10:29:00 am

    It actually said, "but wait" at the end and showed a new child.

    ReplyDelete

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