In What are the lyrics to Walt Kelly’s classic carol, “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie”?, the words of the bridge to the second verse are clearly intended to be:
Hunky / Dory’s / pop is / lolly
Gaggin’ on the / wagon, Willy, / folly go / through!
As they stand, they cannot be compelled to scan with a sledgehammer.
Yep, it’s a typo or mis-pixel-array or somethin’. We’ll get 'er fixed. Thanks for noticing.
It’s like that in the book too. 
Obviously a conspiracy.
http://www.pogo-fan-club.org/images/Boston_Charlie.pdf
I dunno what to tell you. Maybe we should all sing.
"Good King Sauerkraut, look out! On your feets uneven.”
Duck us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an’ polly voo.
Chilly filly’s name is Chollie,
Chollie’s filly’s jolly, and so’s old Lou!
The six verses Cecil cites were published posthumously, by someone other than Walt Kelly. (Okay, his widow. Still…) Are there any additional verses, apart from the ones cited by the questioner, that appear in the comic strip itself? Until such, if any, are found, I don’t see how we can accept the additional verses as canon.
Kelly offered many verses during his lifetime. I’m on the road at the moment, but I should be able to get further info by Tuesday or Wednesday.
Three eight-line verses, actually, though printing “Boston Charlie” in quatrains does seem to be the norm, for some reason or other.
Well, having checked a few of the original books, Kelly was (surprise!) inconsistent.
We have:
“Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!”
and we have
“Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!”
However, clearly one or the other should be a standard for Cecil’s columns etc. so we’ll get it fixed.
We’ve also got some mix and match:
Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly wolly cracker ‘n’ too-da-loo!
Hunky Dory’s pop is lolly gaggin’ on the wagon, Willy, folly go through!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope Cantaloupe, 'lope with you!
Chollie’s collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!
FWIW I checked my copy of the trade paperback, Deck Us All With Boston Charlie. All Walt put in there was the “Deck us all with Boston Charlie” quatrain and “Bark us all bowwows of folly.”
Kelly had the origin of the song beginning in a tavern in Hades (No tables for ladies). Old Scratch (played by Albert) sends his apprentice (Pogo) to the church choir with altered lyrics for the purpose of sowing confusion and thereby destroying the church. In typical Pogo fashion, it doesn’t work. Pogo’s character ends up betrothed to Madamoiselle Hepzibah’s character. Old Scratch tries to hang himself, but he’s too heavy, the chandelier crashes down on his head. Santa Claus (Ol’ Bear) pops in and, impressed with Scratch’s “horns”, offers him a job as a reindeer. Scratch accepts, of course. Howland and Churchy give a prologue and epilogue.
This seems to be the appropriate place to announce that Pogo - The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 3 won’t be coming out until April, 2014 instead of a Christmas release as were volumes 1 and 2.
Anyway, “Kelly’s posthumous chroniclers” in the column is a reference to The Best of Pogo, a collection of fan essays and stuff from the files put out by Kelly’s widow in 1982, which collected the six verses for what they say was the first time. Some of the appearances in the original strip are also reprinted. On Dec, 22, 1959 Albert sings (p. 142):
Bolding added as in original.
Here are the official compiled verses.
Lots of tiny changes. Albert takes the first line of two different verses and smooshes them togheter. There are clearly only two lines in the panel, not four. There is no comma between “WAGON” and “WILLY”. There is no hyphen in “DALOO”. There *is *a hyphen between LOLLY and GAGGIN’. It is AN’ and not ‘N’.
I have everything Pogo-related, I believe. I won’t flip through all the pages of all the collections, but if you have any questions that can be referenced directly like this, I’ll try to hunt them out.
In the comic strips, the lyrics are in voice balloons, hence one can’t rely on the line breaks as necessarily coinciding with reality.
I’ve been very pleased with the complete strips volumes 1 and 2 (the footnotes, explaining some of the more obscure contemporary references are delightful.)
The particular panel I was quoting from has the first line stop after TOO-DALOO! with plenty of blank space available if Kelly had wanted to continue on to HUNKY. He clearly was making a line break there and at no other point, though he could have if he wanted to.
I definitely know that Nora was freezin’ on the trolley because I read it on the funny pages of my Grandma’s Des Moines register lo those many nights ago.
I kept those things (along with shepherds washing their socks by night) and it was certainly something for a child to ponder in her heart.
The Des Moines Register is where I also first read Pogo, long long ago…