Re: Bush whacked

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:53:00 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.music.rem
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email-address-deleted (tad) whispered in a game of "telephone":
>> My favourite lines:
>> "ollie ollie ollie in come free, baby"
>
>I have always leaned toward the interpretation presented in the sheet
>music published (as always) by Hal Leonard. Their version is:
>
>Ollie Ollie, in cum prei
>
>If there are any Latin experts among us, please translate.
The (presumably) Latin phrase is in the R.E.M. sheet music for "Drive"? That's
kind of bizarre. (Kipp Teague's lyric site just has "in come free", which is
what was on a lyric sheet that was provided by the band.)
The usual versions are either something lik e"in come free" or "oxen
free", which World Wide Words suggest is a mutated "out's in free".
That site also reminds us that one of the interesting things about phrases
like this is that they have been passed down via generations of oral tradition
of children, rather than adults, and have probably therefore retained less of
their original meaning and logical sense than other common phrases used by
adults. Which is sorta cool for a phrase sung by Stipe, with all the
deliberate stripping and absence of meaning in his early lyrics.
Interesting. I started poking around in my OED but haven't yet found anything
about it "ollie in come free". (Nothing under either "olly", "ollie", or
"oxen". Oh well. I'll keep looking.)
As a data point, in rural upstate NY and northeast Pennsylvania, cousins of
mine and I used "ollie ollie oxen free" when playing Hide and Seek.
This would be a good question for researchers to add to that great Harvard
dialect study!
( http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/maps.php )
Ron
--
Ron Henry email-address-deleted
http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/ronhenry/