If you are aged enough, you may recall the treacly flower-folk group, Peter, Paul and Mary. One of their biggest hits in the 1960s was Puff, the Magic Dragon — then and now disavowed as having any reference to smoking dope. It’s all about the loss of innocence in childhood, Peter or Paul (or perhaps Mary) claimed. People still sing it at parties, worse luck.I am agnostic on its doper credentials, but some lines are worth revisiting. They reflect the breakdown of the love between Puff and a boy, Jackie Paper, who either grows up or dies (perhaps in Vietnam):"A dragon lives forever but not so little boys,/Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys./One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more/And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar./His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,/Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane./Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave/So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave ....
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