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A mondegreen (also sometimes spelled "mondagreen") is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase, such that it acquires a new meaning.

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, *
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..."

Another example was told to actor Art Houston by producer Todd Hallowell, when they were children. Todd had been told of an old hymn that mentions a large furry animal that suffers with strabismus, in the lyrics "Gladly, the cross-eyed Bear," based on the words, "Gladly, thy Cross I'd bear."

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). Gervase Phinn used "A Wayne in a Manger" as the title of a book about a children's nativity play.

Quite a few mondegreens may be seen in captioned 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 friends. 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. Mondegreens are also an established YTMND fad, albeit called "interpretations" there.

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 Russian 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).

The board game Mad Gab features 1200 mondegreens used as puzzles for players to solve.

The term was the inspiration for the name of the US-British a capella vocal group Lady Mondegreen.

Examples

  • 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")
  • 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)")
  • Lucy and this guy with diamonds (from a lyric in the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", by The Beatles)
  • 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.")
  • 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 *)
  • Play that fucking music right boy (from the song "Play that Funky Music" by Wild Cherry - "Play that funky music, white boy")
  • Donuts make my brown eyes blue (from Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, by Crystal Gayle)
  • Sweet Jamaican baked beans (from A Passage to Bangkok, by Rush - "Sweet Jamaican pipe dreams")
  • 45 virgins and a pelican instead of Glorified version of a pellet-gun (from Glorified G, by Pearl Jam)
  • Lead on O kinky turtle (from the hymn Lead on O King Eternal)
  • ... Harold (or Howard) be thy name... (from the Lord's Prayer - "... hallowed be thy name ...") Wright 1957
  • ... blessed art thou, a monk swimming ... (from the Hail Mary phrase "... blessed art thou amongst women ...". A Monk Swimming is also the title of a Malachy McCourt memoir.)
  • 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")
  • Tell the Huns it's time for me (from the song 'Beneath the Lights of Home (In a Little Sleepy Town)' sung by Deanna Durbin in 'Nice Girl?' (1941) — "Turn the hands of time for me")
  • Round John Virgin ("Round yon virgin mother and child", from "Silent Night") Wright 1957
  • Sleeping for breakfast, sold out to every monk and beef-head. Uh oh, my ears are alight. ("Slaving for bread, sir, so that every mouth can be fed. Oh, oh, the Israelites," from Desmond Dekker's Israelites. This mondegreen was used in a 1990 television commercial for Maxell audio cassettes.)
  • Hold me closer, Tony Danza. ("Hold me closer, tiny dancer." Elton John)
  • The Star-Spangled Banner produces several examples of mondegreens, such as Ramona's reference to the "dawnzer lee light" (dawn's early light) in Beverly Cleary's children's novel Beezus and Ramona. Children in the US are often surprised the first time they actually read the lyrics to the anthem they have been singing uncomprehendingly for years.
Comedian Bill Dana (as the Hispanic character Jose Jiminez) used the old joke of the entire stadium singing directly to him before a ballgame: "Jose, can you see?"

Publications

  • 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

See also

External links

Humor | Phonology | Mondegreen | Mondegreen

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Mondegreen".

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