Well, everybody's building their boats,
Some are building monuments, others jotting down notes,
Everybody's in despair, every girl and boy,
But, when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna jump for joy.
Oh, come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn!
Come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn!
Whoa! and––well, I can do just like the rest, you know, I like my sugar sweet,
But jumping Qs and making haste, you know, it ain't my cup of meat.
Everybody's out there feeding the pigeons out on the limb,
But, when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, the pigeons
1 gonna run to him.
Well, come all without, come all within,
Yeah, you'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn!
Come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn!
Play that guitar now!
Cat's moo and calf's meow
2, you know, I––I can recite them all,
Tell me where it a-hurts you, honey, and I'll tell you who to call.
Nobody can get any sleep – you know, there's someone on everybody's toes;
Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna wanna doze.
Oh, come all without, yeah, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn!
Whoa, come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn!
1
Because in the preceding line "pigeons" is plural, I believe that it's plural here, too, and therefore not a contraction of "pigeon" and "is". However, under that interpretation there is no form of "to be" at all, which, though not standard English, is certainly a well-known feature of non-standard English dialects and is heard often in Dylan's lyrics.
2
Elsewhere this lyric has been represented as: "A cat's meow and a cow's moo". There are a few things I believe that I can say with some certainty about the lyrics of this version: 1) The last word is definitely not "moo" and most likely "meow", 2) likewise, the first m-word is probably not "meow" and most likely "moo" (going on the idea that these two words are the only two options), though I believe Dylan himself gets a little confused at the beginning, pronouncing a sort of "mee-oo"-sound because he starts saying "meow" accidentally before finishing with a clear oo-sound, 3) I believe that one of Dylan's themes in this song was the mixing up of some common idioms (see: "I like my sugar sweet" and "it ain't my cup of meat" from the second verse), so it makes sense when he sings of a "cat's moo" and a "calf's meow". As for "calf", it's pretty clear if one listens to the version slowly that not only is the vowel of the second m-word like that of the first, but that it ends in f too, so it sounds very different from "cow", and, furthermore, "calf" retains the meaning of "cow".