The Winkies

There is enough controversy about what the Winkies, the castle soldiers in "the Wizard of Oz" are singing that it made it to NPR. My coworkers, thus, believed their version must be true.  The actual "lyrics" are not words at all, just sounds, always rendered phonetically, but something close to "Oh-ee-oh e-oh-ah." 

Various words are substituted in as what people think they are hearing. There are reports that people have seen the playscript and it's just the nonsense syllables, and claims that a late-surviving Munchkin - who was there, they stress - said it was "Oh we love - the old one." Other nominations are "Oh we loathe - the old one," and "All we own - we owe her."

Rubbish. The Munchkin Coroner, Meinhart Raabe, would not have been there.  It's a movie, not a high school play where everyone sits around watching the whole thing.  You do your scene and are sent away so that you don't screw things up for others.  Especially if you are a Munchkin.

Listen yourself: both of the "old one" possibilities would have to have some fragment of a "d" in there, and something resembling an "l" would be nice, too. For the other one, both an "n" and an "r" sound would seem necessary and again, an "l" would be nice.  One missing consonant could be overlooked. Two renders the idea impossible.