I picked Squared Arabic 84 for one reason and one reason alone--the color. If you can’t figure out why that’s important please take a second to glance up at the title of this post it should come clear. (If you still can’t figure it out after THAT please stop reading my blog: it’ll just confuse you and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your brain cramp.)-
I love “Mondegreens”--not sure why, maybe it's because I’ve suffered with the condition for a very long time. For those of you unlucky enough NOT to know what the term mondegreen is or where it comes from, read on and find out. According to Wikipedia (for what‘s THAT‘S worth) “a mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that yields a new meaning to the phrase. It should not be confused with soramimi which are songs that produce different meanings than those originally intended, when interpreted in another language.” (I'll be doing a post on my favorite soramimis later.) The term was coined by American author Sylvia Wright in a 1954 essay entitled The Death of Lady Mondegreen. A popular folk song of the time had this chorus…
-
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen. (The REAL lyric, of course, was “And laid him on the green.” )
-
Ms. Wright may well have been the first person to put a name to this particular phenomenon but it’s been going on for quite some time. Kids passed these church gems around for ages. Some of them I’ve actually heard but all of them are favorites…
-
“Gladly, the CROSS-EYED BEAR” (Well, at least he‘s a pleasant cross-eyed bear! You can tell because he‘s “gladly.”) The real lyric is "Gladly, the cross I’d bear…"
-
Here’s one from the 23rd Psalm: “Surely good MRS. MURPHY will follow me all the days of my life". (If you can’t figure this one out go get a Bible and look it up!) I just wanna know how "good" she really is since she's following you all the time. Does she clean up after you or what?
-
Here’s a fun mangle from The Lord’s Prayer: Our father ART in heaven, HAROLD be thy name.” (OK, is our father “Art” or “Harold”?) Weirdly enough I once heard someone pronounce it as “Howard!” Here are some other Mondegreen mangles: “Our Father who HARD HIT KEVIN Thy king FLUNG DUNG…” It goes on to ask “Harold/Howard” to “Lead A SNOT into temptation” and to “deliver us a WEEVIL” or is it “a WEEBLE (TM)?”
-
One of the fellow members of Creation Unlimited (from back in the dawn of time in the 1970s) who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty said he thought for the longest time the old hymn was called “The Old Rugged CROTCH”. (One word: eeew!)
-
Here’s a delicious mess from Onward Christian Soldiers: “Christ our BROILED BASTARD LEANS against the PHONE”. (Personally I always thought it was “Christ our royal MASTIFF“ but maybe that‘s because I like Mastiffs…)
-
Bringing In The Sheaves has been misheard as Bringing in the CHEESE, Bringing In The SHEEP and even Bringing in the SHEETS. (I thought the song was Bringing In The Sheets for years--but we hung or clothes out on a line way back when and when the wind came up you REALLY needed to bring in the sheets or they'd get dirty again…)
-
Mike Andrews, former Choir Director at Community U.M.C. told me about a hymn called “Lead on, O KINKY TURTLE.” Still, looking for that hymn but I never thought of turtles as being particularly kinky.…
-
Church music isn’t the only thing that gets the Mondegreen mangle: patriotic songs and sayings also go through the ringer. For example…
-
“My country TISOVEE. Sweet land of LIBERTINES. Land where my fathers died. Land of the Pilgrim‘s BRIDE…”
-
Or: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic FOUR WITCHES STANS.”
-
Or maybe this delight from The Battle Hymn Of The Republic: “MYNIZA seen the glory of the coming of the BORED. She is trampling out the vintage where the GRAPE GIRAFFES are stored…” (Didn‘t Butterfly McQueen play “Miyniza“ in Gone With The Wind? And while I‘m on the subject of pointless questions--what are “grape giraffes“ anyway?)
-
America The Beautiful gets this Mondegreen mangle: O beautiful for SPACESHIP skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple FOUNTAINS MAGIC TREES above the FRUITLESS plain. America, America, God SHARED his GRAPES WITH ME…”
-
Here’s a bit from This Land Is Your Land. “…from California to the New York island. From the redwood forest to the GHOSTLY waters… Interesting…
-
There’s a whole web site devoted to misheard “Rock and Roll” lyrics. Check out Kissthisguy.com to see if your favorite is there. I’ll be providing a list of my favorite misquotes in another post--later. In the meantime…
-
… ‘nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment