buoy [boy] ~ [BOO-ee]

[Laurence Horn]

You can find a bunch of different versions (52) of "Eddystone Light" on iTunes; the excerpts I checked all have /@hoi/ and /boi/ (and the bit, I just after that couple, about how one of the offspring was exhibited as a talking fish and another served in a chafing dish; all very tragic), but I didn't come across any (without having checked all 52) that included the final spoken couplet below.  I guess it was the old "Brothers Four" version that I dimly recall.

LH


On Mar 24, 2014, at 8:00 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> Who's singing and can you give us an audio URL?
>
> Joel
>
> At 3/24/2014 01:51 PM, Dan Goodman wrote:
>> ...
>> My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light.
>> He slept with a mermaid one fine night.
>> Out of this union there came three;
>> A porgy, a porpoise, and the other was me.
>>
>> One day as I was trimming the glim,
>> Singing a snatch of the evening's hymn;
>> I heard a voice shouting "Ahoy!"
>> And there was my mother, sitting on a boy.
>>
>> Spoken:  That is, a buoy what's for ships that sail;
>> And not a boy what's a juvenile male.
>>
>> --
>> Dan Goodman
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org