Puff The Magic Dragon - 23m 39s

"Puff, the Magic Dragon" is not about marijuana, or any other type of drug.
It is what its writers have always claimed it to be: a song about the innocence of childhood lost.

The poem that formed the basis of the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" was written in 1959 by Leonard Lipton,
a nineteen-year-old Cornell student. Lipton was inspired by an Ogden Nash rhyme about a "Really-O Truly-O Dragon,"
and, using a dragon as the central figure, he came up with a poem about the end of childhood innocence.
Lipton passed his work along to a friend, fellow Cornell student (and folk music enthusiast) Peter Yarrow, who put a melody to the words
and wrote additional lyrics to create the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon." After Yarrow teamed up with Mary Travers and Paul Stookey
in 1961 to form Peter, Paul & Mary, the trio performed the song in live shows; their 1962 recording of "Puff" reached
#2 on the Billboard charts in early 1963.