In "Maloney wants a drink" there is a line that (if you have only heard, and never seen written down), can be read in two different ways:

"Salome," said Maloney, "that's a trick that never fails" -and-
Salome said, "Maloney, that's a trick that never fails"

Both work perfectly well for the context.

There is another song that does that, but I've forgotten what it is. Points for who comes up with it...

And while we're on the subject of context...
In one of Woody Guthrie's songs that I learned back when I was truly bilingual, and English and French were equally contextually appropriate in my family, that has a line that goes (talking about California during the Dust Bowl era as a destination for hopeful migrants):

It's a paradise to live in *or see*

Pronounced owe-see in Cisco Houston's kind of Ozark/Okie accent.

As a kid I heard that line as "it's a paradise to live in *aussi*" (with the "aussi" meaning Also in French). Worked perfectly well for the context, and I only heard it the "right" way recently...

Which means that for decades I've been singing a song without noticing that one of the words was in another language that the songwriter wouldn't have just suddenly changed into...

And speaking (well, writing, as I was earlier) of reading the lyrics versus hearing them, I know a French song called Sarah which is a lament for an older sister gone off to America, and in one of the verses they are all having dinner, missing her, and I had heard a particular line (can't remember my html so pls imagine accents on the last e unless an elf wants to edit, love them elves) as "tous accables" (all burdened) but it turned out to be "tous attables" (all seated {at the table}) -

And in my mental image, they all sat up straighter!

None of these are really threadworthy, but they are forum-appropriate thoughts... and I do hope that somebody comes up with the folk song that has the ambiguous lines. I think it might be Irish.

There is another Irish (well, Scottish, but we had it by The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem) one that works as a weather report...

In the one where they are going to "die for Royal Charlie," they sing something in Gaelic that sounds for all the world like

Patchy fog, fog, fog
Patchy fog, fog, fog
Patchy fog, fog, fooooog
Rise & follow Charlie!

Then there are all the hidden references in other songs sung in brogues (not the footwear, the accent)...

But I digress momentarily into the Rocky Road to Dublin, where in early verses Our hero gets a brand new pair of brogues, and in a later verse he's told his Connaught brogue wasn't much in vogue, and I can't convince my kid that those lyrics demonstrate both meanings of the word Brogue. He thinks the Dubliners didn't like the guys *shoes* and the singer just isn't being grammatical. I think they didn't like his foreign (from another county) accent... a ruling please?

Back to the thought..

-Well, no, never mind.

Next time my train of thought rolls around I'll try to board it and see if I left anything behind.