The word "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined it in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", which was published in '' Harper's Magazine '' in Nov. 1954. She wrote
:When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's ''Reliques'' . One of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
::Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
::Oh, where hae ye been?
::They hae slain the Earl Amurray, {Link without Title}
::And Lady Mondegreen.
The actual line is "And laid him on the green", from the anonymous 17th Century Ballad " The Bonnie Earl O' Murray ". Wright gives other examples of what she says "I shall hereafter call mondegreens", such as:
- ''Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life'' ("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm 23 )
- the "wild, strange battle cry ''Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward.''" ("Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward," from " The Charge Of The Light Brigade ")
The columnist Jon Carroll of the '' San Francisco Chronicle '' has long been a popularizer of the term and a collector of mondegreens. He may have been the chief link between Wright's work and the general popularity of the notion today.
While mondegreens are a common occurrence for Children , many Adults have their own collection, particularly with regard to Popular Music .
A popular joke has a child being asked what God's first name is, and he replies, "Andy." He gets this name from the hymn '' In The Garden '' (a.k.a. " I Come To The Garden Alone ": "Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own..." as opposed to, "And he walks with me..."
Billy Connolly described several mondegreens he sang in church as a child:
- ''We will be tootle-ootle den'' ("We will be true to thee till death" from ''Faith of our fathers'')
- ''A wean in a manger'' (" Away In A Manger " using the Scottish word for a baby)
Quite a few mondegreens may be seen in Caption ed Live Television broadcasting of impromptu speeches, interviews, etc. (one local news report of a "grand parade" was captioned as a "Grandpa raid").
Some mondegreens arise from False Friend s. A phrase in one language may be misheard as a semi-sensical phrase in another language. The humorous aspect of these has given rise to a Music Video genre known as Animutation , in which music in a different language (typically Japanese ) is "misheard" into English, and illustrated. Engrish mondegreens can occur when English lyrics are reproduced by foreign language singers.
This may happen in the opposite direction as well: i.e., English words of a song are misheard, intentionally or not, to mean something in a native language, often with a humorous effect. An example is a Russia n joke in which the song " Can't Buy Me Love " was announced as "кинь бабе лом" ( IPA ), which roughly translates as "Throw a crowbar to the woman".
Mondegreen is also a segment on the popular Australian music quiz show Spicks And Specks ( ABC TV ).
- ''There's a bathroom on the right'' (the line at the end of each verse of '' Bad Moon Rising '' by Creedence Clearwater Revival — "There's a bad moon on the rise")
- '''Scuse me while I kiss this guy'' (from a lyric in the song '' Purple Haze '', by Jimi Hendrix - "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky")
- ''You and me and Leslie'' (from ''Groovin''' by The Rascals — "You and me endlessly")
- ''Jose can you see, by the dawn's early light?'' (the first line of the US national anthem - "Oh, say can you see")
- ''O Canada, our home's on native land'' (from the Canadian National Anthem - "O Canada, our home and native land")
- ''Ain't no woman like the one-eyed Gott'' (from The Four Tops 's song - "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)")
- ''The girl with colitis goes by'' (from a lyric in the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", by The Beatles - "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.")
- ''Give me the Beach Boys and free my soul'' (from Dobie Gray 's " Drift Away " - "Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul")
- ''It is hard to wreck a nice beach'' (from a story, perhaps apocryphal, about one of the earliest Speech Recognition programs being presented, at a demo, with someone saying "It's hard to recognize speech" and producing that phrase as the output; regardless of the truth of this story, this mondegreen was used on a t-shirt given to Apple engineers who worked on the company's early speech-recognition software {Link without Title} )
- ''Play that fucking music right boy'' (from the Wild Cherry song ''Play that funky music'' boy )
- ''It's a hard egg'' (from ''It's A Heartache'' by Bonnie Tyler )
- ''Bullshit!'' (from ''Push It'' by Salt-N-Pepa )
- ''My lover's got no money, he's a goddess from Belize'' (mishearing of ''he's got his strong beliefs'' in ''Free from Desire'' by Gala Rizzatto )
- ''Donuts make my brown eyes blue'' (from ''Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue'', by Crystal Gayle )
- ''45 virgins and a pelican'' instead of ''Glorified version of a pellet-gun'' (from ''Glorified G'', by Pearl Jam )
- ''Eatin' trifles'' instead of "Eton Rifles" by The Jam
- ''You take a piece of meat with you'' instead of "you take a piece of me with you" (from "Everytime you go away" by Paul Young ).
- ''When the going gets stuffed'' instead of ''When the going gets tough'' by Billy Ocean
- ''... Harold (or Howard) be thy name...'' (from the Lord's Prayer - "... hallowed be thy name ...") Wright 1957
- ''... give us this steak and jelly bread, and forgive us our mattresses...'' (from "...give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses...")
- ''... blessed art thou, a monk swimming ...'' (from the Hail Mary phrase "... blessed art thou amongst women ...". Also the title of a Malachy McCourt memoir.)
- ''... Gladly, the cross-eyed bear...'' (from the 1894 hymn "Keep Thou My Way", words by Francis Crosby - "Gladly, the cross I'd bear...") Wright 1957
- ''I am the Lord of the Dance settee'' ("I am the Lord of the Dance said he...")
- ''Lettuce with a gladsome mind ...'' ("Let us with a gladsome mind ...")
- ''The piece of cod which passeth all understanding'' ("The peace of God which passeth all understanding")
- '' Olive, The Other Reindeer ...''' (from the song '' Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer '': "... All of the other reindeer ...") This mondegreen has become the title of a children's book, which was later made into an animated holiday program featuring the voice of Drew Barrymore.
- ''Barney's the king of Israel...'' (This mondegreen was featured on the comic One Big Happy , and comes from '' The First Noel '', with "Born is the king of Israel")
- ''How long is a bay in China?'' (" Hao Long is a bay in China")
- ''Round John Virgin'' ("Round yon virgin mother and child", from " Silent Night ") Wright 1957
- ''Asia Vampires'' ("Age of Empires")
- ''Bald Headed Woman - from a song "More than a Woman"
- Sylvia Wright, ''Get Away From Me With Those Christmas Gifts''. McGraw Hill, 1957. Contains the essays "The Death of Lady Mondegreen" and "The Quest of Lady Mondegreen".
- ''Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy'' - Gavin Edwards , 1995. ISBN 0671501283
- ''When a Man Loves a Walnut'' - Gavin Edwards, 1997. ISBN 0684845679
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