Is Krazy Kat singing a real song?

November 5, 2008 9:31 PM

Is Krazy Kat singing a real song in this strip from 1935?

Krazy Kat sings a song on the 12/1/1935 Sunday strip (sorry, don't have it) as follows, and it's driving me crazy that it doesn't have a final line. I'm wondering if it may be real and have a real conclusion? Here are the lyrics:

Don't be a lonely nickel
it takes two to make a dime
a single word is worthless
it takes two to make a rhyme
a gentle shower
a dandy flower
make a merry month of may (may-time?)
a golden sun
a silver moon
makes up a perfect day
and now let's see
there's you, there's me
.....

and it ends! Help me out!

posted by BlackLeotardFront to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

And that's the way it should stay.

Let's take a roll in the hay.

How much do I have to pay?

I forgot what I was going to say.

Nothing can stand in our way.

(Just in case you don't find the real ending, you can pick one of those)
posted by mikepop at 5:45 AM on November 6, 2008

Best answer: I suspect not, but I can't be certain. Like Walt Kelly, George Herriman did a bit of poetry (doggerel, really) in his strips. he also illustrated the published (book) versions of Don Marquis's series of newpaper columns purporting to have been written by archy the cockroach, who claimed to be the reincarnated poet.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 6:46 AM on November 6, 2008

It's almost certainly invented by Herriman. It doesn't sound like a real song; "a single word is worthless" and "a dandy flower," for instance, are not songlike. And Herriman wrote a lot of similar things, as Guy_Inamonkeysuit says (though "doggerel" is a little off—that describes Kelly's stuff much better).
posted by languagehat at 8:10 AM on November 6, 2008