_Mezzrow_(?), "marijuana cigarette"

[Wilson Gray]

HDAS has

_mezzroll_ "a marijuana cigarette"

from 1944.

The song, Weed, recorded by Bea Foote and released in 1938, has the line,

"All vipers love their _mezzrow_"


The record is quite scratchy and the fi is low. It could very well be
the case that she actually does say "mezzroll." But, WTF? I've been
familiar with _mezz(row)_ for over sixty years, now. But I was unaware
of the existence of _mezzroll_ till a few minutes ago, when I checked
HDAS. I only half-assed a Google search for the words, since my
previous experience has been that lyrics are normally eared from the
recordings themselves and not read from a copy of the sheetmusic.
Like, I did find a transcription the lyrics, but the guy made gross
errors like transcribing "my weed" as "maui" and "mezzrow" as "mauro."

"Hurt my nose open, and that's no lie," <har! har!> as Mick Jagger complains.

WRT to dialect, she's r-full and pronounces "weed, need" as "wee-id,
nee-id." In my *extremely* limited experience - a single speaker -
this kind of breaking is characteristic of the BE of Virginia.
Otherwise, her speech-pattern is ordinary BE. Well, the r-fulness is
kinda out of place. Or should that be "out-of-place"? ;-)

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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