A D A D
Ev'rybody's building the big ships and the boats,
A D A D
Some are building monuments, others, jotting down notes,
A D A D
Ev'rybody's in despair, ev'ry girl and boy
A E D A
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, ev'rybody's gonna jump for joy.
A E D A
Come all without, come all within,
A E D A
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.
A E D A
Come all without, come all within,
A E D A
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.
I like to do just like the rest, I like my sugar sweet,
But guarding fumes and making haste, it ain't my cup of meat.
Ev'rybody's 'neath the trees, feeding pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him.
A cat's meow and a cow's moo, I can recite 'em all,
Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey, and I'll tell you who to call.
Nobody can get no sleep, there's someone on ev'ryone's toes
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, ev'rybody's gonna wanna doze.
”Quinn the Eskimo (Mighty Quinn)” is a 1967 folk-rock song written by Bob Dylan during The Basement Tapes sessions. The song became a hit in 1968 for the British band Manfred Mann, who released it as a single using the title „Mighty Quinn”.
The subject of the song is the arrival of the mighty Quinn (an eskimo), who changes despair into joy and chaos into rest, and attracts attention from the animals. The metaphorical lyrics have prompted suggestions that Quinn is a drug dealer or simply a village elder. Dylan himself has said that the title character refers to actor Anthony Quinn's role as an Eskimo in the 1959 movie The Savage Innocents. Dylan has also been quoted as saying that the song was nothing more than a „simple nursery rhyme”.
More recently, Dylan in his autobiography Chronicles Volume One (published 2004), makes further reference to the song: „On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where The Mighty Quinn (film) was showing. Years earlier I had written a song called „The Mighty Quinn” which was a hit in England, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually I'd sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense, Jamaican thriller with Denzel Washington as the Mighty Xavier Quinn a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song The Mighty Quinn, Denzel Washington”.