Monday, March 27, 2006

Mondegreens

Mondegreens are very fun things. A Mondegreen is a misheard lyric or phrase. Ramona Quimby noticably has a Mondegreen in one of her books, instead of "Dawn's early light," she hears "Dawnzer lee light," and assumes a "dawnzer" is a synonym for lamp.
There are a number of famous Mondegreens including the originaly Mondegreen coined by Sylvia Wright. Apparently there is a Scottisch Ballad that has a verse that goes like this:
Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And laid him on the green.

Sylvia though instead of hearing "And laid him on the green," heard "And Lady Mondegreen." As a child she thought this the tale of a tragic love story--when she grew up and discovered what the words actually were, she was greatly disappointed.

I remember a Mondegreen from my own childhood:
"There's a bathroom on the right" was a line I heard in the Creedance Clearwater song "Bad Moon Rising." (The actual line is "There's a bad moon on the rise.")

Lynness once told me about a Mondegreen she heard. A Vince Gill song has the line "Well our love didn't make it" but she heard, "Well, I love gettin' naked."

Some other famous ones that many people have heard are these:

Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" "Excuse me while I kiss the sky," becomes, "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."

A line in "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" goes "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" but becomes "the girl with colitis goes by."

I read this one in the New Era:
Some parents heard their child singing "I am a Child of God" but the child was a little confused: "Parents kind and dear" became "Parents kind of weird."

As I said, Mondegreens are fun. Have you any good ones?

1 comment:

BigRedHammer said...

"She's got an invisible touch, and"

OR

"She's living in an invisible tuff shed."