# Pogo Christmas Carols **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [December 10, 2005, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070 "2005-12-10T22:31:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/21 "2005-12-16T18:44:53Z")
> [@Daithi Lacha](#): > > A while back, and in a source which I am unable to look up or verify (via a Google search, at least), I read that a lot of the language in the first verse of “Boston Charlie” was a reference to jail life. A “Charlie” was a jail guard, “the trolley” was the system of passing messages in between cells, “Nora” was the name given to your jailhouse sweetheart, and that Walla Walla and Kalamazoo both housed their county’s jail. Something to do with Kelly’s being very interested in prison reform, and wanting to send a message to the guys “inside” that they were not forgotten. > Anyone else got something along those lines? This analysis is not unlike that of [Nostradamus’](http://skepdic.com/nostrada.html) quatrains. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Daithi\_Lacha](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daithi_lacha/32/5430_2.png) [@Daithi\_Lacha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daithi_Lacha)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/22 "2005-12-16T20:19:25Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > This analysis is not unlike that of [Nostradamus’](http://skepdic.com/nostrada.html) quatrains. > > :rolleyes: Well, yeah, sure, but Nostradamus couldn’t draw for beans. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/23 "2005-12-22T17:35:17Z")
I loves me some “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie,” yup, I sure do. One of my favorite Christmas records is Lambert, Hendricks and Ross singing the first verse in their most bombastic amateur-caroler style, twice, with Jon Hendricks providing a couple of choruses of scat for the middle. But when I try to sing the song _in toto_, using the lyrics I learned from reading my first _Straight Dope_ book, I get all hung up on the second verse: > [@](#): > > Bark us all bow-wows of folly, > Polly wolly cracker ‘n’ too-da-loo! > Donkey Bonny brays a carol, > Antelope Cantaloupe, 'lope with you! > > Hunky Dory’s pop is lolly gaggin’ on the wagon, > Willy, folly go through! > Chollie’s collie barks at Barrow, > Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo! ISTM that ‘Donkey Bonny Brays a carol" rhymes better with “Chollie’s collie barks at Barrow” than it does with “Bark us all bow-wows of folly.” And "Hunky Dory’s pop is lolly gaggin’ on the wagon" doesn’t seem to fit, syllable-wise. For my own use, I rearrange things slightly: > [@for kaylasdad99's own use](#): > > 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! That seems to work best for me. Please put down the pitchforks and torches; I’m not going to try to disseminate this in violation of convention. I just thought I’d share my thoughts. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/24 "2005-12-23T04:41:06Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > And to really nitpick, even Cecil gets the original wrong. Here’s how it goes from the very first Pogo compilation: > > Churchy [singing]: “Good King Sourkraut looked out on his feets uneven!” > > Pogo: Whoa! Wenceslas is king – Wenceslas! Wenceslas!" > > Churchy: “Man! Hear that? Winklehof is king! Good King Sour Kraut must be dead!” “Dead? I didn’t even know he was sick!” They list is incomplete, of course. There’s also this one: “Tickle salty boss anchovy Wash a wash a wall Anna Kangaroo Dooby dooby dumdum dooby Dooby dooby dooby dooby dooby doo doo” (Listed in “Prehysterical Pogo (in Pandemonia)”) Actually, my favorite Walt Kelly song parody was this one: “Beetle heifer soak crumble tear snowflakes sly comb.” And, of course: “I was eating some chop suey with a lady in St. Looie When I suddenly heard a knocking at the door. And the knocker he said “Honey” Roll the Rocker out some money Or your Daddy shoots a baddy to the floor.” Or: “As it shone on the schoon of Fraulein McGoon yclept Molly Gemutlich she chose to sing through the nose Of mein leibling rose on the Tra-lee So it’s ding ding an’ oh! They love me in St. Joe When I go Gottleib go, I go jolly.” Kelly was a genius and unlike the other great genius of comic strips – George Herriman – the humor of his strip could appeal to everyone. Even ignoring the barbed political satire, the strip was filled with puns, wordplay, wild characters, poetry and more general silliness in a single strip than Garfield has managed in its entire run (all right, cheap target – change that to “than most any strip can manage in a month”). There isn’t a comic strip artist that doesn’t wish he or she had half of Kelly’s talent. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/25 "2005-12-23T13:33:18Z")
> [@Daithi Lacha](#): > > A while back, and in a source which I am unable to look up or verify (via a Google search, at least), I read that a lot of the language in the first verse of “Boston Charlie” was a reference to jail life. A “Charlie” was a jail guard, “the trolley” was the system of passing messages in between cells, “Nora” was the name given to your jailhouse sweetheart, and that Walla Walla and Kalamazoo both housed their county’s jail. Something to do with Kelly’s being very interested in prison reform, and wanting to send a message to the guys “inside” that they were not forgotten. That’s in one of the comparatively recent Pogo omnibus editions (The Best of Pogo, Pogo Even Better, Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo, Outrageously Pogo, etc.), that mix reprinted Pogo cartoons with other pieces by Kelly and articles by other people. But I can’t remember which book the “Boston Charlie as a coded reference to jail life” article is in, nor the name of its author. And I never could figure out whether it was supposed to be just a light-hearted fictional riff on typical “socio-historical background of art” commentary, or whether there were actually some grains of truth in it. I incline to the first explanation, though. As for other Kelly song parodies, I always enjoyed “Oh give me a home 'Twixt Buffalo and Rome…” Can’t remember the rest of it, though, if there was any rest. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/26 "2005-12-23T18:39:52Z")
The prison/Boston Charlie explanation is given in _Phi Beta Pogo_, edited by Mrs. Walt Kelly and Bill Crouch Jr., Fireside/Simon and Schuster, published 1989, pages 240-241. ". . . Wilbur Crane Eveland, who along with Bill Vaughan of the _Kansas City Star_ was probably Walt’s closest friend had been saving it [this story] for a biography of Kelly that he had planned to write . . . "He [Kelly] made no distinctions with respect to his audiences; the staff of the Harvard Crimson was no more attractive to him than an assemblage of convicts. It was for these convicts, for many of whom he had sympathy, that Kelly wrote, ‘Deck Us All with Boston Charlie.’ . . .Walla Walla, Kalamazoo, Pensacola, and Louisville are all the sites of state prisons. “Boston Charlie” was the name given to all guards in prisons–you can look up “Charlie” in Eric Partridge’s _Dictionary of Slang_ and you will find that he is the man with the stick, the prison guard. Why Boston? A throwback, in all probability, to the days of the original Colonies. “Why is Nora ‘freezin’ on the trolley?’ Nora is the cognomen given to sexual partners of male prison inmates and the answer to his cold condition comes in two parts. The trolley is the wire that inmates string between cells for use in passing to one another. Thus, Nora was not communicating via the trolley. The second aspect of the line is that a person in the “freezer” is in solitary confinement, so Nora was not only not communicating, he/she had been slapped into solitary.” That’s quite a stretch, a most tortured explanation. Nearly as bad as _American Pie_. I’m dubious, myself. TubaDiva Reminded that indeed we are all God’s Screechers. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070/27 "2005-12-23T21:27:29Z")
I’m dubious, too, but the cities mentioned do have correctional facilities. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pogo-christmas-carols/335070.md?page=1)