Oh My Monster

Garrison Keillor's version of a Boy Scout song, sung to the tune of "Oh, My Darling Clementine."

In a castle
On a mountain
Near the dark and murky Rhyne
Lived a doctor
The concoctor
Of the monster Frankenstein*

--- Refrain---

Oh my monster
Oh my monster
Oh my monster Frankenstein
You were built to
Last forever
Dreadful scarey Frankenstein

------

Now the doctor
He was crazy
Studied physics all the time
But it only
Made him lonely
So he bulit ol' Frankenstein

Back in those days
Things were different
Monster parts were hard to find
On a dark night
With a flashlight
He went digging out behind

In a grave yard
Near the castle
Where the moon refused to shine
Diggin noses
And some toe-zes
For his monster Frankenstein

With a stitch here
And a bolt there
And some chewing gum and twine
He assembled
What resembled
That great monster Frankenstein

In a gorey
Laboratory
At exactly midnight chime
Came a frightening
Bolt of lightning
Brought to life ol' Frankenstein.

--- Repeat refrain ---

But the chain bay
Could not hold him
So he broke the ties that bind
Went out roaming
In the gloming
Just to see what he could find

Met a blind man
From the Rhyne land
Shared some bread and poured some wine
Did some fiddling
Fair to middling
Not as good as Andy Stein*

--- Repeat refrain ---

After that I
Can't remember
'Cause the story slips my mind
But I've seen him
Halloweening
So I guess he's doing fine.

--- Repeat refrain ---

--- Footnotes ---

* Andy Stein was the fiddler on Minnesota Public Radio's show, "A Prairie Home Companion."

*Technically, in the novel and in plays and films, "Frankenstein" was the name of the doctor, not the monster.