I'm In Love with a Big Blue Frog

DESCRIPTION: "I'm in love with a big blue frog, A big blue frog loves me." Most of the song consists of explanations of why a relationship with a frog isn't as bad as you think
AUTHOR: Leslie Braunstein (source: mudcat.org thread "Lyr/Chords Req: I'm in Love with a Big Blue Frog"0
EARLIEST DATE: 1967 (Peter, Paul and Mary's "Album 1700")
KEYWORDS: animal love nonsense campsong
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 234, "I'm In Love with a Big Blue Frog" (notes only)
NOTES [221 words]: The mudcat.org thread "Lyr/Chords Req: I'm in Love with a Big Blue Frog" explains this as a social satire: people are so stuck up that they'll accept being in love with a frog as long as it has an acceptable heritage and education. A token of this is, e.g, the highfalutin' spelling of "frog" as "phrog."
The nitpicker in me has to point out that that's not all that fancy a spelling anyway. The use of ph for f is, of course, a token of a word with Greek rather than Latin antecedents; Greek φ could have been taken across as "f," but for some reason the standard is to use ph instead.
But... the word "frog" (from Old English "frogga," which is Germanic) has no relationship to the Greek word for frog, βατραχος, batrachos (a word which, back in the days of Classical education, most scholars would know, since it occurs in Revelation 16:13 as a word for frog, and also repeatedly in the Greek translation of the Book of Exodus). So "φρογ" is pure nonsense; there is no such Greek word, according to Liddell and Scott's lexicon.. Nor is there a Greek word φρωγ. (Though, oddly enough, φρυνη means "toad." But that is a rare word; Liddell and Scott cite it only from Aristotle.)
Surely all of this would pass over the heads of children singing the song in camp, though! Presumably they are singing it for other reasons. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: ACSF240P

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