WARNING: PEDANTRY INCOMING!

On reading back in the thread, I'm struck by guest Greg's assertion back in '16 that Puff is not real in the song on the basis of the "paper wings and giant strings" reference. I'm thereby prompted to put on my English-major hat and take a close look at the text in an effort to properly settle this point.

Let's first note that for the most part, the song's point of view is neither Jackie's or Puff's. The writer says specifically that

• "Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea,"
  
• "Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,"
  

To the external observer, what's interesting here is that Puff is called a "rascal". This is not a word you'd expect Jackie to use to describe a loved one. A pet, maybe yes, but Puff of the song is clearly Jackie's equal partner in adventure {"Together they would travel"), not a mere companion or sidekick.

There's room for considerable debate on the location and geography of Honalee (the details we have being ambiguous in the extreme), but we'll bypass that and move straight on to the key verse. The two lines in question are these:

"A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys;
Paper wings and [giant strings] make way for other toys"

I've bracketed the phrase above because the DigiTrad lyrics render it as "giants' rings", which is (a) not how I've seen the line rendered in most other sources, and (b) interesting as all heck to us textual analysts, especially in the present context. For our purposes, though, that's a digression. What's noteworthy is that these lines are general, not specific. Nothing in the text actually claims that Puff was made of strings, rings, sealing wax, paint, and/or anything else.

Greg suggests that based on these lines, Puff must have been a puppet or marionette. There's at least as good a case, I'd think, for inferring a kite from the items listed (unless "giants' rings" is the right lyric after all). But either of these theories raises a serious textual problem. Both postulate a mode of play in which Jackie is manipulating Puff, either from the ground (if he's flying a kite) or by hand (if Puff is a puppet or marionette). This is at direct odds with the style of interaction described in the prior verse - not merely do Puff and Jackie travel "together", but they both ride "on a boat with billowed sail", and Jackie perches on "Puff's gigantic tail". (This does imply an improbably large boat, but then again that would explain why royalty might bow down on said boat's arrival in their waters.)

Clearly, it's a long stretch to identify Puff himself with the paper and strings (or rings) of these lines. Moreover, the subsequent verse returns to the direct viewpoint, reporting:

"His head was bent in sorrow; green scales fell like rain;"

It scarcely needs saying that a toy dragon of the paper-and-string sort is unlikely to possess genuine scales, let alone enough of them to "fall like rain". That would seem to confirm clearly that Puff must be regarded as real, not imaginary...

...and yet, there's one word in this last canonical verse that hits an odd note.

"Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave,"

"Lifelong" reads very strangely here, especially given that we're also told straight out that "a dragon lives forever". If Puff is immortal, then it's clearly not possible for Jackie to be his "lifelong" friend, even if we extend "lifelong" to include Jackie's adult years. The alternative case, that the word refers to the length of Jackie's life, is worrisome; by that interpretation, we'd need to read "Jackie Paper came no more" as a reference to his death, presumably in childhood. And whereas that reading supports Puff's existence independent of Jackie, it leaves the song with a decidedly downbeat ending - though one with some room for hope, provided the final chorus is sung with "lives" in the present tense. Note too that if we view "lifelong" in this context, none of the added verses featuring a child of Jackie's - whether Jenny or Jackie Jr. - can be regarded as accurate, though the "Daniel Drum/Johnny Plum" scenario remains possible.

However....

If we look at the song from a folklorist's perspective, it seems likely to me that the word "lifelong" amounts to a transcription error or mishearing of some kind on the part of the song's original collectors, precisely because it supplies a detail that cuts against nearly all the other elements of the song. I'd be tempted to substitute either "loyal" or "loving" as likelier choices (or "stalwart" if I had any evidence from other Honalee-based sources to support it) in performance, any of which would permit the inclusion of the disputed Jenny/Jackie Jr. verses - which I think we must regard in the same context as the dozens, nay hundreds, of post-Doyle Watsonian manuscripts relating apocryphal Sherlock Holmes adventures.

END PEDANTRY ALERT