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"You Did It" by Rodgers and Hammerstein from "My Fair Lady"

[The first half of the song consists of Pickering congratulating
Higgins on his success of passing Eliza off as a cultured woman
to high society at the ball of the Queen of Transylvania.
This is the last part of the song where Higgins describes
the close call with Zoltan Karpathy, a Hungarian grammarian.]
.
Higgins: "Thank goodness for Zoltan Karpathy, if it hadn't been
    for him I'd have died of boredom"
Mrs. Pearce: "Karpathy, that dreadful Hungarian, was he there?"
Higgins: "Yes he was there allright and up to his old tricks."
.
"That blaggard uses the science of speach,
more to blackmail and swindle than to teach.
He made it the devil's business of his,
to find out who this Miss Doolittle is.
.
"Every time we looked around,
there he was that hairy hound of Budapest.
Never leaving us alone,
never have I ever kown a ruder pest.
.
"Finally I decided it was foolish
not to let him have his chance with her.
So I stepped aside
and let him dance with her.
.
"Oozing charm from every pore,
he oiled his way around the floor.
Every trick that he could play,
he used to strip her mask away.
.
"And when at last the dance was done,
he glowed as if he knew he'd won.
And with a voice too eager and a smile too broad,
he announced to the hostess that she was a fraud.
.
(Chorus: "No!", Higgins: "Ya voll")
.
Higgins quoting Karpathy:
"Her English is too good, he said,
that clearly indicates that she is foreign.
Whereas others are instructed in their native language,
English people aren't.
.
"And although she may have studied
with an expert dialectition and grammerian.
I can tell that she was born Hungarian!
(Higgins: "Not only Hungarian, but of royal blood.
She is a princess)
.
"Her blood is bluer than the Danube is or ever was,
Royalty is absolutly written on her face.
She thought that I was taken in but actually I never was,
how can she deceive another member of her race!
.
"I know each language on the map, said he,
and she is Hungarian as the first Hungarian rhapsody.

Back to the Hungarian page.