The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152867   Message #3576798
Posted By: Don Firth
18-Nov-13 - 01:25 PM
Thread Name: Mathy Groves - oil of green
Subject: RE: Mathy Groves - oil of green
I was hardly "putting down" the writer of the OP. "GUEST, me to you" is not "guilty" of committing the Mondegreen, considering that he or she got it from written text. The Mondegreen could have happened way back.

Case in point:   there is what I believe is a typo--one letter--in Cecil Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs, in the printed version of "The Unquiet Grave." It's in the verse
Down in yonder grove, sweetheart,
Where we were wont to walk. . . .
It the book, it reads
Down in yonder grave, sweetheart. . . .
I can see two lovers taking a walk through a grove. But wouldn't taking a walk in a grave be a little restricted? And just a bit grim?

No. Somebody goofed. Either Sharp (although I doubt it) or an anonymous typesetter.

But this (grave) is the way Joan Baez recorded it, which is pretty much a dead giveaway that she got the song from Sharp's book and took it as read, without really thinking about whether or not it made sense.

Don Firth