any new mondegreens?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 12 Jul 25 - 12:19 PM

Example time: I see one burlap (in the above sense), or possibly two, in Beware of the Beautiful Stranger:

In the last verse:

There's a slight but considerable danger

.... should I *think* be:

There's a slight but significant danger

.... which to me makes more sense: "slight but considerable" sounds like a contradiction, while "slight but significant" means the danger's small but can't be ignored. The difference is slight but significant, quite apart from fixing the rhythm to match the tune, and adding a handy bonus alliteration.

The one I'm not sure of is in the fourth verse:

That ball needs a re-gun, I said, shelling out

.... which I've folk-processed into:

That ball needs a rebore, I said, shelling out

I've heard of reboring engine cylinder blocks, but not regunning anything; enlightenment humbly requested.*

Sadly, Clive James (Pete Atkin's lyricist) has died, so we can't ask him now on either point. Right, then: Let battle discussion commence ---

* One alternative nowadays might be reboot, but that'd be as anachronistic as one quid for telling one's fortune.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jul 25 - 02:32 PM

Unverified. . .

"The speaker is criticizing the fortune-teller’s prediction by comparing her crystal ball to an old television. To “re-gun” is to recondition a cathode-ray tube (CRT), an old form of television, by replacing the electron gun."

https://genius.com/Pete-atkin-beware-of-the-beautiful-stranger-lyrics

--

A Magic Lantern for Seeing Events at a Distance
What’s central to Andriopoulos’s argument is that these devices included instruments specifically designed for pursuing supernatural research—for visualizing the invisible and showing the subtle forces at work in everyday life. In his words, these were “devices developed in occult research”—including “televisionlike devices”—invented in the name of spiritualism toward the end of the 19th century that later “played a constitutive role in the emergence of radio and television.”

From Etienne-Gaspard Robertson’s 1834 study of technical phantasmagoria, via Ghostly Apparitions.

https://gizmodo.com/an-occult-history-of-the-television-set-1521354168

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 Jul 25 - 05:45 AM

Thanks for the correction, honoured Guest: as one who used to pull junked CRT-based TVs apart for a hobby*, I'm surprised that I missed that'n. The mention of Miss Lee's difficulties with getting the Lone Ranger ought to have clued me in.

Again thanks. I'll amend my working copy, but can't promise I'll remember to get it right on the night.

* Larval-stage electronics. I've still got some of the ferrite ion-trap ring magnets attached to my toolbox.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 Jul 25 - 06:02 AM

Correction to footnote*: The ferrite rings were for focussing the electron beam to a point at the screen. The ion trap assemblies (a much simpler affair) have long since been discarded.

* Hopefully my inner pedant will now stop kicking me in the ear.