The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #32340   Message #1060546
Posted By: Joe_F
25-Nov-03 - 09:25 AM
Thread Name: any new mondegreens?
Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
Here is a sort of antimondegreen, where the (to me) implausible reading turns out to be the right one. When I first saw in a text of Ewan MacColl's "Ballad of the Carpenter"

When Jesus was a little boy
The streets rang with his name,
For he argued with the aldermen
And he put 'em all to shame,

I guffawed. I had always heard it as "he argued with the older men". Hanging around City Hall at a tender age! I said. No wonder he came to a bad end! But it seems from _The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook_ that "aldermen" is what MacColl actually wrote. Even with the help of the OED, I still have trouble understanding that. I thought the people he argued with were rabbis.