The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE



> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Friday, June 11, 2010 12:39 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 8:02 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org>
> wrote:
> > many speakers in the East Coast and in the South do not have the
> > complete merger.
> >
> In the Southern BE of Marshall, TX, It's
>
> Mary [merI], merry [mErI], marry [m&rI]
>
> But, in Saint BE, it's
>
> Mary, merry [mEri], marry [m&ri]
>
> St. Louis joke from at least as early as the '50's:
>
> It was a Christmas party and everybody was feeling merry. Till Mary
> got mad and left.
>
> Of course, the joke is spoken, not written. Buh chawl gnome sane.
>

I remember this joke in the context of a Joe Friday/Dragnet-type
monologue, from elementary school:

"My name is Friday, I work on Saturday. She's my secretary.

I was on my way to a party with my girlfriend when we got a flat tire.
We got out of the car. I pumped, she pumped, I pumped, she pumped. Then
we fixed the flat.

We got to the party and everyone was feeling merry. So Mary got mad and
left.

We went into another room and everyone was jumping for joy. So Joy got
mad and left.

We were sitting in the living room when someone threw a brick through
the window and hit my girlfriend in the chest. It broke two of my
fingers."

There are probably more lines to this, but I don't remember them, and if
it hadn't been for google I couldn't have come up with all of these.
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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