Poor Little Butterfly Is A Fly Girl Now
By: Joe Young, Sam J Lewis

Written by: Joe Young, Sam J Lewis

 
Lyrics:
Poor Little Butterfly Is A Fly Girl Now [Version (a)]:

All alone in her pagoda
Waiting for her sailor man
Poor Butterfly would sit and cry
Someone came along and showed her
How to keep him in Japan
He just came back for a day
But she said, "I guess you'll stay"

Poor little Butterfly has learned to roll her eye
And when she shimmies she's as cute as she can be
Say when this baby shakes, she's got just what it takes
To keep her sailor boy from going out to sea
She knew the Ballin' Jack was bound to bring him back
She learned to do an Oriental dance how! wow! wow!
You ought to see, you ought to see
The way she shakes her Japan knee
Poor little Butterfly is a fly gal now

In her Japanese pagoda
In her lover's fond embrace
Poor Butterfly has dried her eye
'Mid the cherry blossom odor
She keeps smiling in his face
She knows that her sailor boy
Will never say "ships ahoy"
 
The Song:

In order for it to feel more authentic, Beck filled out his Song Reader book with fragments of songs and melodies, as well as fictional album collections and song titles. "Poor Little Butterfly Is A Fly Girl Now" is listed as part of the collection of manly hymns, Hymns For Him.

While many, if not all, of the song titles on Hymns are made-up, some are references to older sheet music/songs. I had assumed this was, at best, half of a reference because of the relatively modern phrase "fly girl" being in it. But turns out, there is a 1919 song by Sam Lewis and Joe Young called exactly this. Crazy!