In his song Where to Now, St. Peter, Sir Elton John sings:
I took myself a blue canoe,
And I floated like a leaf
Dazzling, dancing half enchanted
In my Merlin sleep.Crazy was the feeling
Restless were my eyes
Insane they took the paddles
My arms they paralysed.
(Lyric written by Bernie Taupin. Available on the album Tubleweed Connection. See the whole lyric.)
I found myself translating Elton's songs into Czech and I am curious about the meaning of "blue canoe". Here is what I have:
According to my friend, "blue canoe" had been used by the soldiers of Confederation during the civil war in the USA meaning a "bullet". Now this would make some sense:
I took myself a blue canoe [I shot myself to death],
And I floated like a leaf [towards the afterlife]
Dazzling, dancing half enchanted [I shot myself badly / the wrong way, dying hours in horrible pain]
In my Merlin sleep [in a sleep there is no waking from].Crazy was the feeling
Restles were my eyes [this follows the scheme above]
Insane they took the paddles [my hands took the "paddles of the canoe" = gun],
My arms they paralysed ["my paralysed hands", my hands fell down after the gunshot].
I am a little skeptic about this interpretation. First of all, I find it improbable that Taupin would describe "dying hours in horrible pain" this way; it is neither touching nor fun. There are hands falling down after the gunshot, as well as "dancing in pain". The music Elton John composed to this lyric is far beyond psychedelic, further deepening my doubts. And, one more thing that does not match at all:
It took a sweet young foreign gun
This lazy life is short
Something for nothing always ending
With a bad report.
Why would a gun be "sweet" or "young"? Now this could be allegorical expression of a "young soldier", but at the very beginning of the song, he claims himself to be the executor of whatever causes him to die.
I have come with a different idea: "blue canoe" could be some elusive drug / poisonous substance, contained (for example) in the seeds or blossoms of a (tropical) flower that is blue in color. This would make sense to me:
I took myself a blue canoe [I have eaten a poisonous flower blue in color],
And I floated like a leaf [I have been disoriented]
Dazzling, dancing half enchanted [I could not control my body]
In my Merlin sleep [in a sleep there is no waking from]Crazy was the feeling
Restless were my eyes [kaleidoscopic vision or other vision distortion]
Insane they took the paddles [my insane hands took the drug]
My arms they paralysed [my hands, now paralysed].
This goes with the verse "It took a sweet young foreign gun" meaning fruits, seeds or blossoms of a flower that are blue in color and sweet in taste, that come from a foreign land he finds himself (fighting) and that are "young" meaning unripe, thus poisonous as it is typical for some flowers.
Also, it goes well together with the Merlin; the association between Merlin and shooting myself to death is in my opinion much weaker than the association between Merlin and a poisonous substance, a "spell" that causes "my Merlin sleep".
I have been looking "blue canoe" up in the Merriam-Webster On-line Dictionary without success, I failed to find it in my books, too.
If anyone knows the meaning of "blue canoe", please do let me know. If you see any imperfection in the way I come to understand this, please do the same. I will be grateful for everyone's opinion on these two interpretations of the song.
Best Answer
I think your friend's interpretation of 'blue canoe' (ACW Confederate soldiers' slang for bullet) may be correct, although I've not been able to find any confirmation of that. However, I don't think that 'I took myself..." means 'I shot myself', rather it's the sense of 'I took a bullet' (i.e. was shot). For the rhythm of the song, it scans better to say 'I took myself a blue canoe' rather than 'I took me a blue canoe' ('I [xxx] me a common Southern idiom, e.g. 'I drank me a beer'.) So, 'I took myself a blue canoe' = I got shot.
'Sweet young foreign gun' would then be the soldier who shot him, 'gun' in this context being a someone who uses a gun. Taupin uses the same term elsewhere on the album: 'Ballad of a Well-Known Gun', i.e. a gunslinger.
There is also a pun in the last line of the last verse: 'Something for nothing always ending with a bad report', 'report' also having the meaning of an explosive noise, e.g. the report of a rifle (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/report), as well as the line '...in such a silent place as this, beyond the rifle range'.
I always thought the line 'Insane they took the paddles, my arms they paralysed' was a reference to medics trying to get the wounded man to safety, but, as mawsco so rightly said, songwriters put song lyrics together for the way they sound as well as meaning (if any).
At the time he wrote the lyrics to Tumbleweed Connection, Bernie Taupin was fascinated by the history and culture of the American South and the [American] Civil War era in particular; this theme is carried through much, if not all, of the album. 'Where to Now, St. Peter' is a hauntingly beautiful song about a young Confederate soldier who has been shot, is dying, and is contemplating what happens next. It's also a song about that soldier's faith - 'I may not be a Christian, but I've done all one man can'.
Sorry for the long answer, but this has been one of my all-time favorite songs for decades.