Mondegreens have an impeccable pedigree; the British writer Sylvia Wright coined the word in 1954. She admitted that she habitually misheard the lyrics of the traditional Scottish ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray. Ms Wright thought she heard the following:
“Ye highlands and ye lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
Thou hae slayed the Earl of Murray
And Lady Mondegreen.”
The real lyrics are: “…slayed the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green” and not “And Lady Mondegreen”, so the Mondegreen was born.
It is said that when Ms Wright later discovered that all that had happened was that the Earl had been done to death and laid on a piece of turf, she was distraught at the loss of such a romantic notion. So she commemorated her loss and coined the word Mondegreen.
Jon Carroll the Daddy of Mondegreens
There are Internet sites galore that record Mondegreens, but the daddy of them all is Jon Carroll, who has been collecting them through his San Francisco Herald column for many years.
He tells of one of his contributors who when listening to the Cream song Sunshine of Your Love, heard “I’ll be with you now darling, I’ll be with you till my skis have dried off.” The lyric is of course “…till the seas have dried up.”
Medical Mondegreens
A trawl of colleagues and friends will produce a personal collection of Mondegreens. A colleague insists that the line from the Beatles song And I Love Her is “She gives me everything internally…”The real line is ``She gives me everything, and tenderly.' He is a doctor so it’s understandable he would think ‘everything internally’ not ‘tenderly’.
Staying in the medical field, Steve Windwood’s song “Higher Love” the lyrics have been heard not as “Bring me a higher love” but the more poignant “bring me an iron lung.”
Another of Mr Carroll’s correspondents thought he heard the words from the song Aquarius “This is the dawning of the age of malaria”.
Yet another of Mr Carroll’s regulars thought that Paul Simon sings “Mamma don’t take my chromosomes away”. The correct words are “Mamma don’t take my Kodachrome away”, a neat way of saying that the colours of life are amazing. But most would rather have their Kodachrome removed than any single chromosome.
Alcohol has its place in the world of Mondegreens, as the wrong lyric “With the bourbon I’ll share this lonely view.” More decadent but perhaps comforting than the Red Hot Chili Peppers original line: “with the birds I’ll share this lonely view.”
Gay Mondegreens
That stud amongst studs Rod Steward was misheard singing these lyrics: “I used to love her but it’s Oliver now.” It is likely that Mr Steward would not be amused by the implications for his manhood.
Another straight-on pop idol Jimmy Hendrix has been misheard too. A web site devoted to Mondegreens is called “Scuse me while I kiss this guy”, a tribute to a Hendrix lyric “Scuse me while I kiss the sky.” An apparently often misheard line, but in the late 1960’s kissing the sky was quite excusable, but kissing the guy?
Upon learning of the Mondegreened words Hendrix thereafter sang the words and then planted a kiss on the cheek of a band member.
We must thank Ms Wright for her admission that she wrongly heard the words of that beautiful Scottish ballad and gave it the name of Mondegreen.
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