any new mondegreens?

Subject: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Karen in California
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 03:14 PM

It's Friday and I'm bored at work. Does anyone have any good "mondegreens" (misheard lyrics) they'd like to share?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Wesley S
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 03:33 PM

My mother always used to sing "Got a date with a daydream" instead of "What a day for a daydream". It used to bug the heck out of me.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 04:07 PM

I think Wesley's mum's line is actually better than the original.

This isn't exactly a mondegreen, but close. Recently on the Mudcat I was looking for a song called "The bears have got my Daddy", which I'd found on a tape of tunes from a sort of musical box.

Couldn't be found anywhere. Then someone who runs a site about musical boxes solved the puzzle. "The Boers have got my Daddy." A great little song.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Noreen
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 04:37 PM

"You don't have to say I'm lovely, just because I am"
instead of
"You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand" (Dusty Springfield)

Well, I was only about five... My daughter is now a Dusty fan and sings my words back to me! *BG*

Noreen

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: tiggerdooley
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 04:51 PM

My Uncle Terry thought that the song 'Airport' (you know the one, don't know who by: 'you took my baby to another place...') was called 'Ethel'.

I think he asked for it at the record store!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Hawker
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 04:55 PM

wHEN MY YOUNGER SISTER WAS LITTLE SHE USED TO SING:
LITTLE MISS MUFFETT SAT ON HER TUFFETT
EATING HER CURTAINS AWAY
CUTE REALLY!
LUCY

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Justa Picker
Date: 23 Mar 01 - 05:02 PM

Just listen to anything sung by Steve Winwood, and then try repeating what you think he said, and then later compare that to the lyrics on the CD folder.

I challenge anyone to correctly identify any lyrics he sings from just listening. Go to Mp3.com and listen to his version of "I'm A Man" (when he was with the Spencer Davis Group) or anything off of any of his other albums. Absolutely horrid enunciation and an absolute nightmare if you're in a band trying to do covers of his, armed only with the music but not the lyrics -- but his feel is great! :-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 24 Aug 01 - 09:44 PM

[Proud Mary] Until a fellow muscian suggested that our group do the song, for years I had thought the CCR/Tina Turner records went: "Brown Berry, keep on turnin'!" There is a saying, from an old song, Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella. The original song was, "Let Us Smile Be' Your Umbrella," with be' being a contration of "beneath."

Re: "Round Yon Virgin. Most singers (and congregations) sing the song wrong, as far as pauses and punctuation are concerned. They sing, "...all is bright (breath) Round yon virgin (breath) mother and child...," as though the song were punctuated, " All is calm, all is bright. 'Round yon virgin, mother and child... ." No wonder some kids think there are three people being mentioned in the line, and maybe that one of them is Round John Virgin! It should actually be punctuated (often is, in hymnals) "All is calm, all is bright 'round yon virgin mother and child. Holy infant, so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace."

[We three kings of Orient Are] When I was a kid I always wondered where "Orient Are" was!

I also heard, "Lee Don, oh, King Eternal," for "Lead on, oh, King Eternal." and "Hark, The Harold Angels Sing!" (Angels named Harold?) There's another hymn, This is My Father's World, with a line, "... the music of the spheres ...," which I heard as "... the music of the spears... ."

My cousin used to get really confused on song lyrics. One day she sang, "Later on, we'll perspire as we sit by the fire." (Winter Wonderland)

And, as a child living near Brooklyn and rooting for the Dodgers when I first got a TV set and became aware of the national anthem, sung before each game, I thought it was their theme song -- "Oh, say, can you see by the Dodgerly light ...?"

I posted this last one and a couple of others under "lyr req: Round John Virgin et al.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Aug 01 - 10:32 PM

A few days ago, a Guest, I think it was, did one I love: 'Birds just like West Virginia cold'. (On the Ain't No Ash Will Burn thread)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Aug 01 - 10:44 PM

I can't find 'mondegreen' in my dictionary. Can anyone give me the etiology of the word?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 24 Aug 01 - 11:01 PM

A mondegreen site explains:

The word "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright, who wrote a column about them in the fifties, when she recounted hearing a Scottish folk song, "The Bonny Earl Of Morray." She heard the lyric, "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and laid him on the green" as "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray and Lady Mondegreen."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Aug 01 - 11:07 PM

Thanks!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,BigDaddy
Date: 24 Aug 01 - 11:13 PM

"Donuts make my brown eyes blue," by Crystal Gayle. "Sweet jeans are made of these," by the Eurythmics. "Bob Duran," by the Beach Boys (you know, Bob Bob Bob, Bob Bob Duran?). Oh yes, and "he was clothed all in leather with a cat beneath his chin..." from Steeleye Span's "Misty Moisty Morning."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: pattyClink
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 03:35 PM

okay, well, there's this Jimmy Buffet line 'don't try to describe Wisconsin if you've never seen it'. Apparently HE was trying to say 'try to describe a Kiss concert'. I know what I heard.

But Crystal Gayle's "Donuts" are pretty priceless, I must say.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 04:16 PM

Mrs G still thinks there is a Marilyn Manson song called the Beautiful meatball (Beautiful people). Phil (FOG on this site) reckons I sing "With a ran tan tan and a Jimmy Jimmy Shand" during Three Jolly Sportsmen. My favourite of all time and I can never resist it is Desmond Deckers "Me ears are alight" though...:-)

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: iamjohnne
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 04:50 PM

Well, round john virgin was what i heard too. And ther is a song by ELO that I cant even quote because I am not sure what they are saying. My kids heard "free advice and you just didn't pay" instead of "free advice that you just didnt take" from the Alanis Morrisette song. And in "Winter Wonderland" I heard "in the meadow we can build a snowman, and pretend that he is parched and brown" instead of "Parson Brown" In the deep south we dont get many snow men so I had no idea that one couldn't be parched and brown.

Johnne "goin where the weather suits my clothes"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Walrus
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 05:41 PM

As a kid I "remember" Desmond Decker's "The Israelites" as having the line
"Wake up every morning, baked beans for breakfast..."

Regards

Walrus

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 06:13 PM

I once in print a text of "Lord Bateman" in which the line

This Turk, he had one only daughter

appeared as
This turkey had one only daughter.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 06:24 PM

This isn't a midheard lyric, but misinterpretted. A singer I played with in a Christmas group said she grew up thinking the hymn "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear" was really "Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear." A way different image. Oh, and on the carol "Three Ships" she thought the words were, "the birds and Mary and Christ were there" bringing in a whole pantheistic concept.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MAG
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 12:46 AM

Actually, Phil, there is a whole book called *The Consecrated Cross-eyed Bear.*

Thank you ShanteyMatt for teaching me that "makes a can" should be "nets a cran."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 05:02 AM

Don Ross reports that his favourite (probably because it was actually a request a fan made of him) is "Slow-talking Walter, the fire engine guy".

or

"Smoke on the water, and fire in the sky."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Bernard
Date: 26 Aug 01 - 01:35 PM

Dire Straits - 'Money for nothing and your chips for free...'!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,BigDaddy
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 09:57 PM

Just remembered Norma Waterson discussing "as shepherds washed their socks by night," instead of "watched their flocks by night" but that may have just been a childhood joke...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: toadfrog
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 10:12 PM

Now, I really like these verses from "My Lagan Love," which are from the liner notes of Margaret Barry, I Sang through the Fair" (Alan Lomax Collection). The notes are by one Matthew Barton, although the story would be much better than if Lomax himself had written them. Clearly, Barton listened to the disk and wrote it down the way it sounded, rather than go to the original. .

And like a love-sick lemon,
She has my heart in thrall; No life I own, nor liberty,
For love is lord of all.

And often when the beetles' horns
Have lulled the eve to sleep,
I steal into her [unintelligible],
And there, adoring, peep!

I must say I like the mondegreenized version better than the original, it's kinda racy and fraught with mystery.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: toadfrog
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 10:20 PM

Sorry, should have given a link to the actual words. They're here: MY LAGAN LOVE.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Noreen
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 04:00 AM

Thank you, thank you, toadfrog, you have made my week! Words fail me about the love-sick lemon...

Noreen
withasillygrin

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 09:19 AM

My wife was singing in the house, and did the Kipling/Bellamy song 'Rolling down to Rio'. The beloved girl-child retored "Mummy that's disgusting!". She thought the line was:

I'd like to roll to Rio some day before I mould.

regards

Brian

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ringer
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 12:38 PM

The start of Halfway to Paradise: I want to be your Mother...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: SharonA
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 04:10 PM

I heard both of these mondegreens on the radio (a deejay's send-in-your-misconstrued-lyric show)...

Richard Marx (in Hold On to the Night): "Hold on to the mammaries" (should be "memories"!)

Stevie Nicks song (not sure of the title): Should be "You'd better put your kingdom up for sale." Mondegreen: "You'd better put your key down my brassiere."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Deda
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 04:25 PM

This is probably old hat, but in place of "the girl with kaleidescope eyes", someone heard "the girl with colitis goes by". My husband also thought that dawn's early light was the "donzerly" light, and I thought the winter wonderland snowman was (pretend that he is)"parse and brown". I wasn't sure what that meant but I thought of it as a speckled snow, maybe covered with grass and dirt. Then one of the most famous is the rock line "excuse me while I kiss the sky" misheard as "while I kiss this guy" -- casting doubt on the sexual orientation of the singer.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 09:16 PM

There are those who maintain that Hendrix DID actually sing "kiss this guy" on occasion, while performing "Purple Haze"

I have just acquired a CD by the Irish band Anam and on the first line of their version of "Mary and the Soldier" they sing "Come all ye lads so fiery now" instead of "Come all ye lads of high renown"

Murray

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Melani
Date: 29 Aug 01 - 11:02 PM

There are always the classics--"Christ the royal master leans against the phone" and the famous Creedence Clearwater song "There's a Bathroom on the Right."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Genie
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 11:58 PM

I recently heard Nanci Griffith in concert, and she sang a song that I had heard on a copied tape of one of her albums. This copied tape had no song titles printed on it, so I had to rely on what I thought I heard to figure out the titles and lines. This particular song hook line [title] was hard to understand on the tape, but the closest I could come was, "You're one date shy of a sure thing."

When I heard her in concert, she said the name of the song before she sang it, so there was no confusion: "One Blade Shy of a Sharp Edge."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,genie
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:03 AM

Another Beach Boys mondegreen. For quite some time, without listening carefully to the rest of the lyrics, I thought they were singing "Little Blue Scoop," instead of "Little Deuce Coupe."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Genie
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:13 AM

(I posted this under another thread, but people looking for mondergreens would be likely to overlook that thread, so I thought I'd add it here. It's one of my favorite mondegreens.

A guy I heard singing the Eagles' song, "Take It Easy," was singing the line, "...lookin' for a lover who won't blow my brother ...". I asked him about it, thinking he was trying to be cute, but he said he thought that was the real line (which, of course, really is, "...who won't blow my cover...".

Genie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Alta Rigo
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:18 AM

Until I saw the words to "Mr. Bojangles" in print, I thought one of the lines was, "He looked to me to be the eyes of Ish as the smoke ran out."

I did not know what ancient deity "Ish" was, but I pictured a tropical island with a huge stone idol with smoke and fire pouring out of its eyes.

Now that I have seen it printed as " ... the eyes of age, as he spoke right out," I have little trouble hearing it correctly.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Callie
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:53 AM

This one comes via a work colleague:

he always misheard "two faces have I" as "do faces have eyes?" (to which the answer is, obviously, YES! TWO!)

There was a previous Mudcat thread on this where someone heard "My Son's A Prawn" instead of "Mason's Apron" - that one has stayed with me!

Callie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,George
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 02:26 PM

Related to Brian's report on "Rollng Down to Rio":

I once heard a (reasonably well known - won't divulge names) group sing in performance: "I've never sailed the Amazon, nor yet been to Brazil, but down in the Magdelenas, they can go there whenever they will." (Rather than "...the 'Dawn' and the 'Magdelena'...")

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 03:38 PM

Heard a child singing "Come back yard, millor, come back yard" And our family favourite, from 'Bohemian Rhapsody'- "The air is bent where the devil had a sideboard built"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Deda
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 05:38 PM

When (a close relative who shall remain nameless) first heard the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA", he thought it was a recruitment gimmick song for the armed services -- "Servin' USA".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,George
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 06:30 PM

I'd intended, of course, to type "...the 'Don' and the 'Magdalena'..." (grumble, grumble)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 08:38 PM

Once, I was listening to Nick Cave's "The Ship Song," and heard:

Come sail your ships around me And pull your britches down.

I immediately remembered that the "britches" part was actually "And burn your bridges down." But since then, whenever I hear The Ship Song, I hear "britches."

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 09:30 PM

The second line of "the Israelites" should be "so that every mouth can be fed". I heard it as "I solder every mouse and beef head."

In "Bohemian Rhapsody" the word "Bismillah" shows up. My brother explained that it's Arabic for "in the name of God". I thought they were singing "Miss Miller".

Hermans Hermits song about the Chinese girl: "last night I met a new girl and her name was Wu". (should be "in the neighborhood".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Argenine
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 10:27 PM

I forgot the name of the song, but it's an early rock song that has a line, " ... dancin' with the chick in slacks ... ." I actually figured out what the line was fairly quickly, but it always sounded like " ... dancin' with the chicken slacks ... ."

It conjured up strange images of either a chicken wearing slacks or of some kind of slacks dancing by themselves but decorated with pictures of chickens.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Scorpio
Date: 16 Sep 01 - 12:32 AM

Putting several kids' mondegreens of the Lord's Prayer together, I came up with:

The Lord Sprayer

Our Father Richard in Heaven,
Harold be Thy name.
Thy king done come, Thy will be dumb
On earth a kiss in Heaven.
Give us this day our jelly bread
And forgive us our dads as we forgive our dadders.
And lead a snot into Penn Station,
But deliver us some email,
For Thine is the King Dome and the power and the glory forever, Ah, men!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Scorpio
Date: 16 Sep 01 - 12:35 AM

Er, ... That's "on earth as a kiss in Heaven.
Scorpio

P.S. The individual mondegreens are real; I just combined them.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cappuccino
Date: 16 Sep 01 - 05:02 AM

There actually is an archive of mis-heard lyrics, at www.kissthisguy.com

As at today, it says it has 2,237 entries.

All the best -Ian B

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Genie
Date: 16 Sep 01 - 08:39 PM

Thanks for the lead to that website, Ian.
I had another one I was going to post, but I dropped my laptop and had to reload the system software. I lost my bookmarks in the process. If I find it, I'll post that link, too.

Genie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Argenine
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 11:04 PM

When I first heard "Bei Mir Bistu Shön," I thought it was "Buy Me a Beer, Mister Shane."
Arge

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 06:31 AM

The Leaving of Nancy ... my sister used to mangle the line "the parting has come and my weary heart aches" ... "the parting has come and my *weary sore legs*".

A friend of mine who will remain nameless had a country-rock band who did a version of the Burrito Brothers' "Farther Along". There is a line about God looking down from his "home in the sky", which he sung as "hole in the sky". Which image I much preferred ...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 06:32 AM

Actually ... if I'd remembered the correct line as "weary soul aches" my sister's mondegreen would have made more sense!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Melani
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 02:04 PM

I guess this thread explains the Folk Process pretty well.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: dorareever
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 02:57 PM

Here's two folk mondegreens.I must say that when I did them I didn't know english very well... 1) Whiskey in the Jar (the Captain Farrell version sung by the Dubliners)...I misheard "come a band of footmen and likewise Captain Farrell" as "come a band of fat men and they looked like Captain Farrell".Thought about a family revenge or something....lol 2)Also sung by the Dubliners "Off to Dublin in the green"; "but the IRA is fighting for the land that the Saxons stole" ( I guess these are the right words...)misheard as "but the IRA is fighting for the land can have sex and all!" That ruined a bit the sense of the song and used to leave me a bit surprised.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Chicken Charlie
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 03:00 PM

Line in Vacant Chair, "Now a golden cord is severed and our hopes in ruin lie." Heard as: "Now a golden forty-seven and our hopes ...." Don't even ask me why.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Arne Langsetmo
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 06:00 PM

I sent this one off to Dick Gaughan, whose version occasioned this one:

Bonnie Jeannie o' Bethelnie:

Nou Jeannie's gotten mairriet an her tocher's doun tauld

Bonnie Jeannie o Bethelnie wis scarce saxteen year auld

O Bethelnie, o Bethelnie, ye shine whaur ye staun

An the heather bells aroun ye shine owre Fyvie's laun

I kept hearing this as:

Bonnie Jeannie o Bethelnie wis scarce saxteen year auld

Oh, the felony, oh, the felony. . .

But then again, they probably had a different age of consent. . .

Cheers,

-- Arne Langsetmo

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Arne Langsetmo
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 06:10 PM

Then there's the John Prine story.

A fan came up to him and asked if he could sing that song about the "happy enchilada". He said "I don't sing any songs about enchiladas, happy or otherwise". Then he figured it out:

"A happy enchilada and you think you're gonna drown."

Cheers,

-- Arne Langsetmo

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: bill\sables
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 07:36 PM

We were playing a venue in Bradford West Yorkshire when a bloke asked us if we knew "Itchy Fanny by Cliff Richard". It took us a while to realise that he meant "It's so funny, why we don't talk any more.
A more common one is in the song "Three Score and Ten" I always hear the line;
They longed to fight the bitter night
instead of;
They long defied the bitter night.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: brid widder
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 07:44 PM

it's harvest time...as a child I often sang 'let us with a glass of mild'..rather than let us with a gladsome mind...on the other hand....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,BigDaddy
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 10:51 PM

Listening to "The Red River Valley" as a child I always thought it said "They say you are cake in the sunshine..."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: dorareever
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 12:53 AM

Then there's Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs"...they: "always speak out 'bout famines"; too bad it was: "always been out of our minds"instead!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Trevor
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 05:55 AM

My little brother always used to say, in The Lord's Prayer, "Deliver us from eagles...."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mr Red
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 05:44 PM

The Beatles song about Wigan - "wigan work it out"
the "Hook & Eye" song. "Hook & eye turn to when nobody needs me?"
Armegeddon sentimental over you
Butcher arms around me honey
Sam & Janet evening, you may see a strangler.
and from the Sound of Mucus.............

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Melani
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 05:57 PM

Last night I mentioned to my husband and mother that a kid I knew made Eagle Scout at 14. My mother, who is unfamiliar with Boy Scout ranks, thought I said Evil Scout, and commented, "Only in San Francisco!" My husband inquired whether he had gotten his merit badge for poisoning pigeons in the park.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cobble
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 05:59 PM

" Like a dewdrop on the nose ".... hope the Scottish Bard will forgive...... " Like a dewdrop on the Rose"

Mrs. C

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 10:14 PM

From "Faded Coat of Blue" - No more the bugle calls the weary one - which I heard as "no more the bugle call's weary whine". I've heard some pretty pathetic buglers, especially in Boy Scout camp, so the line made sense the way I misheard it.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Bert
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 10:34 PM

'glass of mild'; I like the way your mind works Brid.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 04:35 AM

A cabaret band - who prided themselves on their vast repertoire - were playing a local Sunday morning residency and were approached by a punter who requested that they play "Paddy, Me Boy". They conferred amongst each other and, after much scratching of heads, were disappointed to find that none among them knew the tune. So they asked the punter if he could give them a few clues, hum a few notes, anything ...

He was surprised they didn't know it and sung the first line "Paddy, me boy, is that the Chattanooga choo-choo ..."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Scabby Doug (at work)
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 05:53 AM

I had forgotten about this one... a few years ago was listening to a pub band playing various covers of rocks songs, when they launches into "Whiskey in the Jar" (a la Thin Lizzy).

The singer very confidently produced the line "I fisrt produced my pistol, then produced my ray gun...

Cheers

Steven

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Whippet
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 06:03 AM

There's the Keith Donnelly one. Play me a Jazz Chord you know 'I Jazz Chord to say I love you' and the equally famous Vera Lynn Eskimo classic 'Whale Meat Again !!'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Mr Red who's too lazy to log-in at work
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 08:29 AM

Keith Donnelly loves them, he did a few on stage at Bromyard. Like the hairy tongue song - "Her hair it hung over her shoulder, tied up with a ................
grafitto in NZ c1986 "When the atom drums bop - whale oil beef hooked"
thanks for the reminder Whippet.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Fortunato
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 08:41 AM

And then there was the Four Tops hit:

"Sugar pie, honey butt."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: VoxFox
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 09:39 AM

Madonna's song La Isla Bonita has the line - Last night I dreamt of San Pedro but my brother-in-law heard it as - Last night I dreamt of some Play-dough. We are still laughing. - VF

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: KitKat
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 09:51 AM

My daughter discovered one recently on the 'Mulan' soundtrack - on the song called 'I'll make a man out of you'. We thought we heard 'keep my hair immortal, and you might survive'. It was (we think) 'Heed my every order and you might survive'.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: CapriUni
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 10:19 AM

Genie --

re: Round John Virgin

For the last couple of years, Fox has done an animated special for Christmas called "Olive, the other reindeer" about a little dog named Olive who thinks she may in fact be a reindeer that only looks like a dog, and she runs away to the north pole to help save Christmas when Blitzen breaks his leg... Round John Virgin is one of the people she meets along the way.

It really is a great special (my favorite scene is barroom at the north pole). It's now one of my favorites (along with "Grinch" -- the original).

BTW, where does the word "mondegreen" come from? Is that derived from a misheard lyric itself?

And perhaps the most famous misheard lyric, although old, may be Gringo -- the story (as I remember it) is that the Mexican fighter in the Mexican American war gave that nickname to the American soldiers because the troops kept singing "Green Grow the rushes, oh!" by Burns...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MC Fat
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 10:42 AM

My son when he was little used to sing the Billy Ray Cyrus hit 'Achy Breaky Heart' as 'Eggy Bready Heart'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: CapriUni
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 10:56 AM

MC Fat -- was/is your son fond of french toast, then?

;-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MC Fat
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 11:08 AM

He did have a bit of a liking for French Toast it was at times a speciality de La Maison Fat Bastarde. He absolutly hated sprouts though.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: CapriUni
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 11:51 AM

MC Fat --

I don't know of any young boy who likes sprouts ... brussels *or* alfalfa ;-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Deda
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 12:24 PM

Not exactly a song lyric -- My mother was once working in her rose garden when a thorn embedded itself in her ankle, causing painful swelling that went on for days. "That which we call a rose," she mused, "by any other name would swell my feet."

She was quite a wonderful piece of work, my Mom.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 09:16 AM

Since we've moved onto what-people-say-sortof-mondegreens, when my daughter was about 4 she would often refer to 'The Dance of the Sugar-Lump Fairy'. Eventually, we tried to persuade her that it was Plum - so she just switched to 'The Dance of the Sugar-Plump Fairy'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: CapriUni
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 12:24 PM

LOL, DMeG, I think I like "Sugar Plump fairy" Better than "Sugar Plum"...

Total trivia point: Up through the 1800's what we now call "raisin" were what was referred to as "plums" ... so "Plum Pudding" was actually flavored with raisins....

So sugar plums were probably raisins coated in sugar, and maybe cinemon... talk about redundant!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel.Parsons
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 07:07 PM

My childhood memories include confusion in church, singing "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild", when it came to the line "Pity mice implicitly!" Of course, I now know it should have been "Pity my simplicity" but what the hey?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Nov 03 - 06:13 PM

"It's a long way to the shop if you want a Sausage Roll"

Instead of

"It's a long way to the top if you want to Rock & Roll"

Looks like we could get a complete song out of this start...
:-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Nov 03 - 07:21 PM

dorareever, I didn't know English very well either (we spoke German at home)when I and my brother just older, instead of singing "We praise thee, oh, God for the son of thy love", etc, soulfully sang, "You crazy old God".

I'll never forget the flabbergasted look on my very religious mother's face.

I remember we also sang lustily, "Rass q the pear ishing". My poor mother.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cluin
Date: 24 Nov 03 - 10:18 PM

Not exactly a mondegreen, but there was the story going around about the Beatles' song, Baby You're a Rich Man... It was cobbled together from a couple of disparate song fragments that John and Paul were each working on separately, the Lennon bit supposedly written for Brian Epstein (to tell him to relax now; he was rich)

The lyrics go:
Baby, you're a rich man
Baby, you're a rich man
Baby, you're a rich man too...

But some claim that John Lennon sings on one of the choruses: Baby, you're a rich fag jew...

I confess I can't hear where it's supposed to be in numerous close listenings to the song. But then again, I can't hear the infamous "I buried Paul" line either. Though I have heard other bits in other songs where Lennon obviously flubbed his lines.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 12:12 AM

One that I have been wondering about since I first heard "Rolling Home":
Is it "The gentry in their fine array" or "The gentry in their finery"?

So, it just now occurred to me I oughta search DT...
Found a link to John Tams's home page, so now I know it's "fine array". Thanks, Mudcat!

A couple of others:

"I love you honey, but you don't carrot all..."

When we were kids, my sister heard "Alone again, Angeli(que)" instead of "Alone again, naturally"

Cheers,

YY

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 06:58 AM

listening to my car CD player with the window open in heavy traffic produces some good ones on occasion, such as:
"not by brother, not my sister, but a mean old horse, standing in the need of prayer".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Barb'ry
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 08:40 AM

This isn't a musical one but when I was a little girl, I had to say my prayers at night time and used to say 'Gentle Jesus meek and mild, look upon thy little child, pity my SIMPLE SETTEE' (simplicity) and feel very indignant that he thought our settee (sofa) was simple!!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 09:25 AM

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.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Moses
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 10:24 AM

Not a mondegreen but I just love Sid Kipper's "We are the boys who are Norfolk and good"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GLoux
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 11:16 AM

When my twins were around 5 or 6 years old, we were travelling somewhere in the car and they asked to hear "The Mushroom Song"...my wife and I racked our brains trying to figure out what song they were talking about...sometime later, I happened to put a Best of Paul Simon CD on with Mother and Child Reunion..."it's only a MUSHROOM away!!!" That is "The Mushroom Song."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cluin
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 12:41 AM

A couple from my kidhood:

Neil Diamond's "Forever in Bluejeans" which I heard as "Reverend Bluejeans" (I visualized a clerical version of Mr. Greenjeans from Captain Kangaroo... was he really Alice Cooper's father?)

And from the Steeler's Wheel (Gerry Rafferty) classic "Stuck In The Middle With You", the line:
"Losing control, yeah I'm all over the place"
I thought was:
"Who's been throwin' up all over the place?"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 09:48 AM

I usually rough-record new songs and then "filter" them through my family before inflicting them on anyone else. When I played "Lowestoft Rock" to my 17-year old daughter for the first time, at the end she looked at me incredulously and asked "What is the first line of the chorus again, Dad?".
So I repeated the line for her: "So what's to become of the large beamers now", referring to an alternative name for trawlers, but clearly a word she was not familiar with. "Thank God for that" she said, "I thought you were singing 'penis' instead of 'beamers'!".
She was right - the rough recording was very ambiguous around that word. So when the time came to record the song properly, I paid particular attention to that line. The result: I kept dissolving into laughter at that point for the first 5 times or so, and nobody could understand why, until I told them...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: JWB
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 02:38 PM

I came across a Renaissance troup singing chanteys at the Cleveland, Ohio, tall ships festival. Their chorus to "Paddy Lay Back" went:

Paddy, lay back, take in your slack.
Take a turn around the capstan, heave and haul.
Around ship's station, boys, be handy,
We're bound for better horizons 'round the Horn.

The version most folks sing is:

Paddy, lay back...
Take a turn around the capstan, heave a pawl.
'Bout ship stations, boys, be handy,
We're bound for Val-a-pariso 'round the Horn.

Does this count as a variant?

Jerry

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 01:19 AM

"You're where you should be all the time
and when you're not you're with
some underworld spy or
the wife of a postman..wife of a postman"
- from Carly Simon's You're So Vain

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: jimmyt
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 12:34 PM

I know this is thread creep. but just as an aside, I was recently touring the Round Church in Cambridge UK, a very unique structure, most of the round churches in England have their origins from the Knights Templer, copying the Temple in London, which was supposedly based on the Jerusalem Temple. I asked a young man there, "Excuse me, is this a Templar Church?" "Oh, it is definately a church." he replied, thinking I was asking "is this a temple or a church." I thanked him and went on my way.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 09:24 PM

I found this one when I was looking up the lyrics to Okie From Muskogee (for the "No More Whorehouse" song challenge ) today. DK if it's a real mondegreen or just a typo, but the line
"We don't make a party out of lovin'.
But we like holdin' hands and pitchin' woo"
was posted on line as

"We don't make a party out of lovin'.
But we like holdin' hands and pitchin' wood."

Genie

Come to think of it, that CAN sometimes come from holdin' hands, can't it? §;-D

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Seoniad
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 10:13 PM

Remember when no bird of grace ever lit on "Auntie Griselda"?
I heard that phrase as "a Tinkerbell doll".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 10:21 PM

jimmyt , your "Excuse me, is this a Templar Church?" and the young man's reply reminds me of many years ago when I worked for a while at a health spa.   We were giving our "Sardoettes" -- small, purse-size towelettes infused with the bath oil "Sardo" -- to our members and guests as a promo.   Being Oregon in October, it was raining, of course.   When I asked one woman, "Did you get a Sardoette?" she blithely replied, "Oh, no, I brought my umbrella!"

Genie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 10:56 AM

Hold me closer Tony Danza
Count the headlice on the highway

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 11:05 AM

My favorite is not really a mondegreen at all. It's just a line that could be understood two ways, if you hear it without seeing it in print.

Norman and Nancy Blake, singing "The Grave of Bonaparte."

He eats not, he hears not, he's free from all pain...

Peter.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 11:41 AM

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Bizibod
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 11:49 AM

Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World"
   
      The bright blessed day,
      The dogs say goodnight...


Strangely it never occurred to me just how incongruous this notion is....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Fiona
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 03:43 PM

I think my looking for the lyrics to

'Ee by gum broon coo'

when the song was

'Ee by gum but I'm cowd'

is pretty good!

Fiona

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 04:56 PM

OMG, I'm cracking up!



"The bright blessed day, The dogs say goodnight..."


"He eats snot, he hears snot, he's free from all pain..."

"Hold me closer, Tony Danza
Count the headlice on the highway "

ROTFLMAO!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 05:47 PM

Ain't no woman like the one-eyed Gott.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From:
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 06:45 PM

Mind you, I learned this song 40yrs ago listening to The Trio. From "Roddy McCorley"
"Around him marked in grim array
a skull marked Ernest Ban"
'Course once I heard The Clancys do this song I laughed my rear off.
Strengh to our friends in London. Mike

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 03:55 AM

mkebenn, when I heard the Kingston Trio's "Roddy McCorley," I thought they were singing,
"... for Run Tun Town, for Run Tun town,
he led them through the fray ..."

and

"... from Farmfair and from Fisherscot..." (I thought those were the names of towns ..."

and I thought they were singing
"Around him marked in grim array
a stalwart burnished band"

Genie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From:
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 10:39 AM

Genie, I also wondered what "thru tutulass" meant.
mike

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 11:32 AM

Don't forget The Beatles homage to Thomas Hardy;
"Eustacia Vie, and I say hello"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: DebC
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 12:48 PM

Last March at the Bacca Pipes Folk Club, Chris Coe said that she had just come across a wonderful term for mis-heard lyrics:

"Mouldygreens"

Deb Cowan

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Calico
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 03:35 PM

My sister used to sing 'the little Lord Jesus lay down' in 'away in a manger' as 'little George Jesus.'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Highlandman
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 04:04 PM

At a Scottish games this past weekend, caught the tail end of a band front man's yarn about one of their numbers, concerning "funny blue bunnies coming after ye..." turns out the real lyrics were "bonny blue bonnets."
"And death awaits you all, with nasty, pointy teeth!" - The Wizard Tim
-HM

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,sharky
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 11:09 AM

i was learning french at the time ithought the beatles were singing c'est c'est louise instead of eight days a week

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 31 Jul 05 - 09:07 AM

There's the apocryphal story of the little girl who, after attending her first church service,reported that she had heard the minister say the words 'in the Father and in the Son, and in the hole he goes'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 31 Jul 05 - 09:50 AM

Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Tony Bennett were playing a charity gig and threw down a challenge that between them they could sing any song anyone suggested, or pay $100.000 to the charity,
little old man sticks up his hand and asks for ' Farmer Jack ' well none of them know it but before they pay up they ask him to sing it, so he starts off, Farmer Jack to a King,From Loneliness to a Wedding ring.

I'll get me coat, eric

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 07:58 AM

From my wife's old song book (early 70s): she'd just learned Byker Hill (probably the Young Tradition version), and wrote the words down as:

Bike a hill and walk ashore,
Collier lads for evermore....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Torctgyd
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 11:12 AM

As a nine or ten year old in nw London I loved Desmond Dekker's Israelites but I reckon my version of the lyrics when singing along was 90% mondegreens. Even now, when I hear it, a lyric jumps out for a "oh that's what he sang!" moment. The advert on the TV (for Maxell tapes?) was with the mondegreen lyrics written on it culminating in (the already mentioned above but it's too good to not repeat) my ears are alight!!!!!

Get up in the morning searching for breksa (breakfast?).

Also, a few years later I could have sworn The Jam's Eton Rifles actually had the chorus "eating trifles".

And what are the proper words that still sound like "Bless my cotton socks I'm in the nude"?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 08:02 PM

"I reckon my version of the lyrics when singing along was 90% mondegreens."

... and you DARE to not share it with us?


Tsch! Tsch! Tsch!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 01:57 PM

The Rolling Stones came to Cville last week or so, and played my all time fave - Shattered. At which point I heard that a friend of mine had always thought Mick was singing "I'm Jagger..."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:17 PM

When I was much,much younger I was convinced that Lonnie Donegan was singing
"I've been diggin' all my life and I nearly got to Hell,
But my uncle's got potatoes and his fuckin oil well"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Rumncoke
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:46 PM

I have a song about mining - it is just called 'pit song'in my book - the chorus starts 'Jowl jowl and listen lad, hear the coal face working'

the last verse starts
Now the deputy crawls from flat to flat
Whilst the putter shoves the empty 'uns

I heard in a song someone had written, a referrence to 'tyumuns' - which - when I asked - was a dialect work for empty tuns, taken from another song.

I don't think so...

Anne

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:42 PM

Here's a couple that I heard recently from friends:

From the chorus of "Banks of the Ohio" -
And only say that you'll be mine,
in my home we'll have T.V.

And from "My Baby's Gone" by the Louvin Brothers: "Hold back the Russian Menace".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:44 PM

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - Uncle Dave Macon's version of "Sail Away Ladies" - the refrain: "Don't Sheetrock the patio".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:41 PM

Rumncoke, the song is called "Jowl and Listen" which was collected by Walter Toyn and popularised by Jack Elliott of Birtley and the rest of the family. The verse in question is
"The deputy crawls from flat to flat,
The putter rams the tyum'uns,
But the man at the face must knaa his place,
Lke a mother knaas her young'uns"

tyum'uns (sometimes chummuns)are empty tubs.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Juan P-B
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 05:16 PM

When she was a wee 'un the elder 'Rock Chick', JP, used to love 'Farewell To Tarwathie' and used to sing "...in hopes to find Richard a-hunting the whale"

Along with 'Jazz Chord to say I love you' and 'Itchy Fanny how we don't talk anymore' is 'The Wurlitzer Song'....

"Wurlitzer One for the money! Two for the show"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 12:47 PM

An older cousin once gave us an example of a twice-told mondegreen.

In an old country song there is a line that says 'My heart is withered like the petals of a rose I saw dying today.'

My cousin evidently thought it said My heart is withered like a fiddle, etc.

Later she forgot that line and evidently couldn't remember which musical instrument it referred to and in front of my older sisters sang, 'My heart is withered like a banjo of a rose I saw dying today.

True story.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Sieffe
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 03:32 PM

I am going to sing that version "you don;'t have to say I'm lovely, just because I am" at the top of my voice all the time now . . .thanks heaps lol. . .

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 11:21 PM

and when you're not, you're with
someone who would pry a wire from a clothespin

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cluin
Date: 19 Feb 06 - 11:30 PM

My Dad asked me the other day "Who was that sang that song "Pretty Little Love Song"?

I said I'd never heard of it.

He said, "Yes you have. You used to have their album. Remember? It went Pretty little lo-ove song... Pretty little lo-ove song..."

"Oh," I said. "That was the Marshall Tucker Band. And the title was Heard It in a Love Song."

But I think his mondegreen made better sense.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 21 Feb 06 - 05:16 PM

Haven't gone through this thread, for some reason but, just in case - have you all seen THIS PAGE ??

Regards

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Emma B
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 02:24 PM

Just had a visit from an Irish friend who told me this mondegreen heard from a "traditional" singer on the small island where he lives.
He quoted it as being typical of a "certain" Irish outlook on life :)

"If it wasn't for the allegations
I'd sleep out in the wood"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: KenBrock
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 04:42 PM

It wasn't until I was about 30 and saw in print the lyrics to Cole Porter's "Night and Day" that I didn't think that somewhere in the tropics there was a species of tree known as the hidamy, as in "Night and Day, under the hidamy".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 04:50 PM

The amazing Mr Smith,told me an amusing story of the time he was playing with the band Wild Oats,a punter came up and asked them if thay knew any Ted Baxter songs. NO sorry, they replied weve never heard of Ted Baxter.Not Heard of TED BAXTER,but he,s famous you know the fellow that wrote Rambling Boy AND Last thing on my mind .

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Genie
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 04:55 PM

"The Peace Carol," sung by John Denver and The Muppets, has a chorus that sounded like this to me at first:

The branch that bears the bright holly,
The dog that rests in yonder tree,
The light that shines for all to see,
The peace of Christmas day."

Since that second line conjured up so comical and nonsensical and image, I sort of 'readjusted my ear' to listen to the song again, focusing on what similar-sounding lyric might make sense.   

I'm sure the actual lyric has a "dove," not a "dog," resting in the tree, but it still SOUNDS like "dog" to me.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 05:02 PM

one of the early song collectors [ithink it was Sharp]collected a version of LORD BATEMAN in devon,the singer, instead of singing proud turkey,sang proud Torquay.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Snuffy
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 08:25 PM

In some mummers plays the Turkish Knight has become the "Turkey Snipe"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Kajikit
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 09:20 PM

In Winter Wonderland, I was always certain that the line went 'in the meadow we can build a snowman, and pretend that he's a passing clown'. And I wondered what the heck that had to do with marriages :P

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Scoville
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 10:43 PM

I suppose everyone has seen that ad on TV where the teenagers are singing, "Stop the catbox" instead of "rock the Casbah".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 12 Dec 06 - 11:46 AM

As mentioned quite a long time ago in a different thread, Prof. Parsons the ex-Salt Town Poet, remains convinced that the second line of 'All The Good Times' is not 'The hunter has hung up his horn' but 'The hunter has swallowed his horse'.
And more recently the Duchess Of Winsford,now Programme Director at Radio Leighton in Crewe, was definitely under the impression that Elvis Presley, in his hit song 'Burning Love', was actually singing 'I'm a hunk of burning wood'. Quite why Mr Presley should be claiming to be a lump of charcoal remains unclear.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 12 Dec 06 - 12:17 PM

Well, of course, "burning wood" might suggest a different meaning in the context of a Presley song.
;-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 17 Dec 06 - 05:50 AM

'..........just a come-on from the horse on second avenue'?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 17 Dec 06 - 10:58 AM

In most versions of "Lady Franklin's Lament", the following lines appear:

   Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe
   Is the only one that ever got through

I once heard someone sing a very interesting but sensible mishearing of the first line, but I'm not sure exactly how the second line was altered to go with it, so I'm making a plausible guess about that second line:

   Only the Eskimo and his kin can know
   The only one who could ever get through

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mick Tems
Date: 17 Dec 06 - 09:57 PM

There was a Dutch group who massacred the Cyril Tawney song, Sally Free And Easy:

"Think I'll wait till sunrise (sic)
see my enzymes down"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 12:08 AM

On Aussie ABC TV - in the Xmas Spicks & Specs issue - as told by teh presenter...

Dick the Horse has lots of Lollies ... Tra lala etc
That's the way he gets his Jollies ... Tra lala etc
That's the way our Nanna heard it ... Tra lala etc
Now we sing it every Christmas... ... Tra lala etc

Come back Pogo, all is forgiven...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Linda Goodman Zebooker
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 12:15 AM

Overheard tonight while waiting for the subway:

   "What kind of bear is a holly bear?"

    "A what?"

    "A holly bear. You know in the Christmas carol, where it says the holly bear's a crown."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 05:15 AM

I don't know if it's because I was just reading a JimmyT post or if I've got a strange sort of mind, but I just misheard Coope, Boyes & Simpson doing 'Down in yon forest', aka 'Bells of Paradise' and my brain heard

'at the foot of the bed there grows a thong'...

LTS

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: eddie1
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 06:21 AM

Many years ago, a small child of my aquaintance told me he had learnt a Christmas song called, "Three Wee Kings"!
Well, it fits doesn't it?

Eddie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 07:49 AM

I was thinking I might say that's a bit of a pissy sort of song, but I decided that I wouldn't ...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 11:28 AM

add

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 18 Dec 06 - 07:28 PM

Prairie Oyster has a new CD with the song Sweet, Sweet Girl To Me on it. This is their best album in a long time - Get it!

The last two lines of the chorus are:

Should have done right when I had my day;
Now I'm all alone and I have to pay.

The way Russell pronounces it, it sounds like:

Now I'm all alone and I have a toupe.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Dec 06 - 08:22 AM

thrwasan incident many years ago at Blaxhall ship .
Cyril poacher was requested to sing the nutting girl,afterwards an american tourist asked him why did he sing hold the wheel.
Theline cyril sang was[ had her will]not [hold the wheel]

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 19 Dec 06 - 08:50 AM

I used to know someone who would always sing "The Black Velevet Band", apparently in all seriousness, with the words:

"I'll give you seven years penile servitude..."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Greg B
Date: 19 Dec 06 - 01:26 PM

See the 'Old Oakum Boat' thread on this board...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Anne Lister
Date: 19 Dec 06 - 06:55 PM

Two I remember from my teenage years ....Donovan's "Catch the Wind" was immortally rendered by a friend who heard "Our ears put together counted thirty", and the same friend taught me her version of "Pretty Peggy-O" which had the memorable image of the "troop of Irish lagoons".
My sister used to sing the famous Adam Faith song "Send a messy tomato" (message to Martha).

Anne

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 20 Dec 06 - 04:14 AM

This one isn't much of a stretch, but when I first heard the song "This Endris Night," this is the way I 'heard' one verse:

The child then spake in his talking,
And to his mother did say,
"Yea, I am known as Heaven's king
Though I in cribbie lay."

I thought that seemed quaintly cutesyish -- to call a manger a "cribbie."

Then checking the DT here, I realize that what was acutally being sung was:

The child then spake in his talking,
And to his mother did say,
"Yea, I am known as Heaven's kind
Though I in crib be laid."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Dec 06 - 08:53 AM

What false Argyll could not subdue
Through many wall-eye cages ...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Elettra
Date: 20 Dec 06 - 10:03 PM

From my cousin when he was 4 or 5, upon hearing the song "Baby Come Back" way back in the eighties, I think the group was Player???
"Piggy come back, and you kind of moo at me."
(Baby come back, any kind of fool could see.)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,redhorse at work
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 08:45 AM

Tabster
Is that as in " Albert A Myers will try and catch the wind"?

nick

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Anne Lister
Date: 21 Dec 06 - 07:20 PM

Good old Albert A Myers ...

I also remember being perplexed by a request to sing the song about the girl who was killed in a pub. We didn't sing any songs remotely like that. Eventually the requester said "you know, I shot my own true love in the room of the Swan".   Molly Bawn/Polly Vaughan ...I could never think of the song the same way after that.

Anne

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Dec 06 - 07:16 PM

redhorse,

Eating onions will help you 'catch the wind'...

I often have difficulty keeping a straight face in public, but years of practice have helped...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cluin
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 08:58 AM

I played a gig in Toronto a couple of years ago where this fellow came up to chat with me between sets and requested a song
called "Irish Machete".
"I haven't heard that one, but I'm intrigued," I answered. "How does
it go?"
He obligingly sang, "♫...Did ye ever go into an Irish Machete, where
whisky was plenty and money was scarce...♫"
"My dad used to sing one like that," I told him. "But his was called
Irishman's Shanty."
"Oh. But it had the same tune?" he asked.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 11:12 AM

"I remember Dublin City in the railroad times" for "I remember Dublin City in the rare ould times". And it kinda made sense.

re: "Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear" -- Dsughter's Vacation Bible School group adopted Gladly as their mascot and marched around with a picture of Gladly on their flag.
- Phil

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens? ?
From: Genie
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 11:41 AM

Cluin, I think the idea of an "Irish Machete" sounds intriguing.

And Phil, I'm sure Gladly The Cross-Eyed Bear would make a great companion for Round John Virgin and for our Lord whose hallowed name is Harold. *g*

but, foolestroupe, I thought the food that helped you catch the wind was beans.

Genie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Gulliver
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 01:05 PM

When I was very young the song "Yellow Rose of Texas" was often
played on the radio and it became my favourite. For months I went
around our apartment singing "The Vienna Rolls of Texas".


(a Vienna roll was our mother's favourite loaf of bread)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Scoville
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 11:28 AM

Not really a mondegreen, but whenever I play Randy Travis' "Heroes and Friends", instead of him singing "Your friends won't FORSAKE you for somebody else", I think he's going to sing, "Your friends won't MISTAKE you for somebody else", and then I start laughing.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 11:33 AM

Well, at the Deb Cowan houe concert in South Portland last evening she mentioned that a friend of hers had just discovered this gendre, but she referred to them as "mouldygreens" rather than "mondegreens"!

It figures.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 12:57 PM

It do, don't it Charley?
Likewise, when Carol inquired into the "etiology" of mondegreen, there was a certain irony given the thread. I did NOT read through this great long thread, so I'm no sure if anyone mentioned it.
ETIOLOGY?    Etymology is the word there Carol. :)

Proofreaders' Anonmous
Dennis

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 05:22 PM

"Proofreaders' AnonYmous"? ;~<>

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cluin
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 05:25 PM

"Proofreaders' Anonymous"?


And does it really require the apostrophe?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 09:27 PM

No.

Not only is it not needed, it's incorrect.

Genie

Pedants Anonymous ;-D

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 09:31 PM

yup!

Bill D,
Pedants Unanimous

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 07 - 12:48 AM

OK, I'll admit this isn't a lyric mondegreen, but it still fits the category. And it cracked me up.

I was watching TV this afternoon when a commercial came on for a local video rental business. They showed VCR/DVD covers of various popular films as the announcer rattled off such genres as "Classic movies," "action flics," "porn films," "animated features," ... .

Whoa!!   Did the announcer really say "porn films"!!?

I was sitting there in astonishment, scratching my head trying to make sense of something I found rather incomprehensible for a local, mid-afternoon, broadcast TV ad. Could I have possibly mis-heard that category? The images of the DVD/VCR cases were small and quickly passed from the screen, so I couldn't see what movies they were showing as examples of "porn films."

If you're not quicker on the take than I am and haven't figured out my "mondegreen" by now, my strong hunch is that the3 announcer actually said "foreign films."

That makes more sense, don't ya think? §;-D

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 Mar 07 - 01:01 AM

Oh, BTW, that last post was mine.   I forgot to log in.

Genie

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,vectis at work
Date: 06 Mar 07 - 10:42 AM

I have been singing the chorus of Manchester Rambler as
"hard northern way" for two decades or more.
I found out it was
"hard moorland way" yesterday

ooops

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Scoville
Date: 06 Mar 07 - 11:15 AM

The Southern accent strikes again: I've been listening to the Red Clay Ramblers' version of "Kissing is a Crime" my entire life and have always thought the words were:

"Born to be a bitter girl and never kiss again . . . "

Until about a week ago when I saw the words in print for the first time and realized it was:

"Born to be a better girl . . . "

Which makes more sense (although "bitter" is not too far beyond reason), but I still feel oddly traumatized. I wonder what else on that album I've misheard.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Fliss
Date: 06 Mar 07 - 06:57 PM

My Mum thought 'Fog on the Tyne' by Lindesfarne was 'Bug*er the Tyne its all mine!   And Hawkwind were 'Porkwind':)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 23 Jul 07 - 02:28 PM

Yesterday in a jam session one of the guys did a Gospel song that at first sounded for all the world like it began:

"When my toilet is over ... "

I wouldn't help thinking, "Shouldn't it be 'When my toilet RUNS over ... '?"

But since that concept didn't fit the rest of the lyrics, I figured he must have really been singing, "When my toil, it is over ... "

Turns out, the actual lyric is "When my toiling is over ..."

But with an opening line like that, I still think the song cries out for a parody along the lines of "When my toilet runs over."

§;-D

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Les from Hull
Date: 24 Jul 07 - 11:14 AM

I can't help thinking that Rattlin' Roarin' Willie (Sweeney's Men) sounds a bit like:

Rattlin' roarin' Willie oh he's gone to the fair
For to sell his fiddle and buy some underwear.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Ruston Hornsby
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 07:40 AM

In Liverpool soul group The Real Thing's 70's hit "You to me are Everything" the line "Now you've got the best of me, come on and take the rest of me" always sounds like "Now you've got the vest off me, come on and take the rest off me..."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 02:34 AM

I kind of like that one, Rustin.

;-D

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: DMcG
Date: 12 Jul 08 - 04:39 AM

Actually a pretty old mondegreen, but new to me. There's a song call "Christ Made a Trance" on a recent Waterson:Carthy CD where Martin writes:

The Passiontide carol Christ Made a Trance is a song which I have known for years. "Trance" is a piece of old usage of the word, used here to mean a narrow defile between two places - in this case life and death. It's a great example of apparently obsolete bits of language surviving in old songs.

What he didn't say is that when C Sharp collected it from Mrs Reservoir Butler, what he actually collected said:

"O God's in France all Sunday"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 12 Jul 08 - 10:01 PM

There's a pop ballad from the '80s that has a hook line in it that I've never been able to decipher no matter how often I hear the song. The refrain that contains this line is:

Tonight I need your sweet caress - Hold me in the darkness -
Tonight you ____ __ ___ ____ ___ ... .   
The words in the blanks always sound kind of like:
"Tonight you come on Breath's Love's nest." (or "bread's love's nest).   

And nothing it sounded like made any sense to me.

I finally checked "the google" for "lyrics: 'Tonight I need your sweet caress - Hold me in the darkness'" (since I didn't know the title and couldn't search for the line I wanted without a clue as to what those words were).

The song is titled "Hands to Heaven," and the lyrics are intelligible in some people's recordings, but not -- to me, anyway -- in the popular recording by Breathe.

The mondegreened line is actually,
"Tonight you calm my restlessness."

(I think Breathe kind of pronounces the line as "Tonaht you cahm mah restlussness."
Mystery solved.)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,c.g.
Date: 13 Jul 08 - 09:57 AM

back in the 70's a gentleman called Norman Iles 'recontructed pagan carols' and other old songs.

His recontruction of the Hal-an-tow was based on 'hearing the folk club audience singing "God bless the Merry Moses and all her power and might-o"' I wish I could remember what amazing theory of Old Testament cross-dressing he came up with to explain this.

Unfortunately the line is actually 'Good bless Aunt Mary Moyses', Moyses or Moysey being a common Cornish surname.

Goodness only knows what he made of 'We are to the merry green woods to hunt the buck and hare-o'.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 11:30 PM

When I was little, I heard

"See what the boys in the background will have,
And tell them I've having the same."

That shady gang was, of course, actually the boys in the back room, but I think it sounds a lot more sinister my way.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: DMcG
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 08:32 AM

My daughter was in hysterics for several minutes after my wife sang "Emily sings with the radio on". This is rather better known as the line "Video killed the radio star".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 01:19 PM

Is this a Mondegreen or did someone record it this way?
Dougie Maclean's "Caledonia" IN THE DT contains an error in the 2nd verse which always makes me laugh when I see it, or even hear it, as it seems several people must have got their lyrics from here!
The line should be:
"with conscience flying in the wind"
The DT has it as "with coat-tails flying in the wind"!
If you don't believe me, listen to the man himself, at 2mins 15secs into the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMpSg78s684

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 22 Jul 09 - 08:05 PM

Refresh

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 22 Jul 09 - 09:25 PM

When I was in high school a kid I knew came down the hall one day singing a Woody Guthrie song popularized at the time by the Weavers:
So long, It's fingers Gunolia. I pictured poor old "Fingers" with his feet in cement brogans being tossed over the side of a boat into the water, while the gangsters broke in a chorus. Or maybe they were singing So long, it's been good to know ya.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 03:16 AM

LOL, Jerry!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: scowie
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 05:30 AM

Not quite a mondegreen, but hilarious anyway! Cliff Richard's song was always sung thus among my associates of the time "All my life i've bin kissin; your left tit, 'cause yer right ones missin' OH BOY!
!
BUT the classic is by the ever great Bridie Gallaher who could make the telephone directory sound delightful if she sang it, on one of her early recordings, either "Moolight in Mayo" or "Girl from Donegal" sings "The Emigrants Letter" beautifully as always, but misconstrues a word. It is of course an emigration ballad, the lad has left his girl and family behind but is writing to console them and to reassure them that he is being treated well, and so he writes in high-falutin' english that he has "Lots of COMBUSTABLES piled on his plate" I rather think it Should be COMMESTIBLES, that is eatables, and not fire lighting material!!!
Now the strange thing is that every other recording of that song makes or remakes the same error, and I know a few!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: BobKnight
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 06:27 AM

Pedantic time: "Oh Boy" is a Buddy Holly song. Cliff may have covered it, but definitly a Buddy song.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: scowie
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 06:35 AM

memory failure again! still a lots happened since then!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Micca
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 09:01 AM

Recently during a chorus of "Bully in the alley" the am certain the person nest to me was singing " Johnny has a ring pull now"!!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 10 Aug 09 - 08:02 PM

For many years I had "The Barnyards of Delgatie" as "The barnyards at break of day".
And "East Enders" is still known in our house as "Steam Denders", which is what my son used to call it when he was learning to talk!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 07:46 PM

Apologies if this has already been posted, but Snopes has a collection of Christmas carol mondegreens HERE I thought would be a good addition to this thread.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Smedley
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 10:19 AM

Thanks to Simon & Garfunkel's enunciation, as a kid I always thought the second line of Scarborough Fair was "Parsley, saydrels, merry and thyme".

For years I assumed saydrels and merry were obscure varieties of herb.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Guest, Dave in Michigan
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 04:42 PM

"bill\sables" (sic) wrote:

"A more common one is in the song "Three Score and Ten" I always hear the line;

They longed to fight the bitter night

instead of;

They long defied the bitter night."

I've always assumed it was either "they lost the fight" or "they long did fight".

And there's always the question of who the Swell was.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 06:15 PM

Smedley: I sometimes make it "Sparsely sage, those wary in time" -- but that is deliberate.

*

Dave: Which do you think *is* the correct version? I have it as:
"They long did fight, that bitter night, their battle with the swell."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 06:33 PM

200

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 08:14 PM

Not musical, But, whenever I hear a trail for the BBC Radio 4 programme "Crossing Continents"....It always sounds like "Cross Incontinents"...
Which, I suppose, would be more realistic.
Been there. Done that!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 09:27 PM

I heard someone mistake Dolores Keane for singing the line ...would moisten her eyes" as "...with mice in her eyes."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 01:51 PM

I just discovered a mondegreen that's in the DT for the song "Mary's Boy Child" (harvested from a post in a thread about "Mary's Little Boy Child."

The line in question is not actually from Jester Hairston's "Mary's Boy Child" but from the song "Oh, My Lord," which the group Boney M put together with Hairston's song as a medley.
Boney M: Mary's Boy Child / O My Lord

The line is actually "For a moment the world was aglow,
All the bells rang out, there were tears of joy and laughter."

But, with the Jamaican accent of the singer, whoever originally "transcribed" the medley and then shared it online at a "Lyrics" website heard it as:

"Oh, a moment still worth was a glow ... "

And that mondegreen seems to have been fruitful and multiplied, thanks to these "internets."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe Nicholson
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 11:58 AM

In Sundayschool we would sing There is a greenhill far away without a city wall. I allways wondered why a green hill far away would need a city wall. I think I was about twentyeight when the meaning dawned.

Joe Nicholson

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 12:01 PM

From Louis Armstrong's 'Wonderful World'

'.........the bright blessed day,
The dogs say goodnight'!!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Ian Gill
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 05:09 PM

Apologies if it's already here but I've just found the first line of 'Little Sir Hugh':
"It rains, it rains in merry Lincoln" reported as
"It rains, it rains American corn" referenced in Bob Stewart's book "Where is Saint George?" which I've been re-reading.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 01:28 PM

Kat, thanks for the link to that holiday mondegreens website.

My favorite is "Noel, noel, noel, noel, Barney's the king of Israel." LOL

Of course, "Let men their sins enjoy" (Joy To The World) and "Six geezers laying" (12 Days Of Christmas) are close runners-up.

Another Christmas song that's often "mondegreened" is "Christmas Time's A-Comin'."    The line "I can't walk for runnin' - which tends to be pronounced "[Ah] cain't walk fer runnin'" - has been misheard as
"Cane foam's a-runnin'"
or
"Hockey foam's a-runnin,'"
and you'll find those posted fairly often online as the actual lyrics.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 07:12 PM

Not eactly new, but there's a debate about Carrickfergus: is it
To ferry over my love and I...............or
To ferry over my love and die ?????? (As he does eventually!)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Anne Lister
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 02:23 PM

Not exactly a mondegreen, as it's not in a song, but a student I'm teaching 1 to 1 was listing what you would need ready for a new born baby (for a childcare lesson). She said - "oh, there are those squares of soft stuff, aren't there ... funny name ... they're called after a religion ... that's it ...Muslim squares. Why are they called after a religion?"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 14 Apr 10 - 08:28 PM

I just heard, on an old LP,

Maxwell carousing, surely is a train.
I'm on my long dirty home.

Maxwell only got to carouse once, but *every* time, despite knowing the song, I heard "journey" as "dirty".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 09:20 AM

>In Sundayschool we would sing There is a greenhill far away without a city wall. I allways wondered why a green hill far away would need a city wall. I think I was about twentyeight when the meaning dawned.

Good grief, Joe, I've been singing that for years and just now got it!
And I am (alas) ever so much more than twenty-eight.
-Glenn

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Weasel
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 09:57 AM

My dad used to sing along with that wonderful Paul McCartney song, Mollicking Time.

It was a couple of years before he saw the title written down and realised his mistake - ruined it for him.

Cheers,

Weasel

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: pavane
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 10:18 AM

The lyric files supplied with commercial backing tracks are a rich source of material.

Just one example - I am sure that Carly Simon sings "Scarf which is Apricot", pronounced US style (A as in Apple rather than A as in Ace)

In the lyric file, it comes out as "Scarf which is Afric cut", whatever that might mean.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Ken Brock
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 01:17 PM

Speaking of Carly Simon, the first few times I heard "You're So Vain" I thought the line was "some underworld spy or the wife of a clothespin".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 08:30 AM

Some of these are hilarious! Like "the wife of a clothespin." ROFL

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 01 May 10 - 05:19 PM

On YouTube yesterday I found a video of Tish Hinojosa singing one of her original songs.

The video was listed as "House To Tennessee."

(For those not familiar with the song, it's "Taos," not "House.")

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Ken Brock
Date: 01 May 10 - 11:43 PM

Morris Gershwin, father of George and Ira, consistently referred to their big Act 1 closer from LADY, BE GOOD! (1924) as "Fashion on the River" instead of "Fascinatin' Rhythm". He also claimed "Embraceable You" as his own personal song because of the line "Come to Papa, do".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tootler
Date: 13 May 10 - 07:53 PM

A beauty tonight from "A Fair Maid Walking in her Garden"

"I am your young and well hung sailor"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Snuffy
Date: 25 May 10 - 08:47 AM

Once I gathered wild flowers in the sweet countryside,
But my garlands have withered, my pony has died.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: bubblyrat
Date: 26 May 10 - 06:46 AM

Karen & I have long had trouble with "Oh Cumberland"--- We think it is something like ;
   " Fire in the Gas Fault, LA freeway" in the first line, but cannot be certain !! Anyone help ?? (That'll teach us to try learning from CDs !!)    Meanwhile;

   The Jamaicans are a resourceful race,able to make a sandwich from a beer -can ! " Hey, Mon ! I'm hongry ! Gimme a beercan sandwich !"

For years,as a child,I struggled with " Good King Wensless Last Looked Out" and " Syree Lives A Goodly Gence". But I'm OK now.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 11 Jul 10 - 10:59 AM

A Little Help From My Friends

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: kevthefarmer
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 03:51 AM

Two from the same song in the Copper Family repertoire- "Come all ye Bold Britons ". As sung, these are nonsense and surely detract from a powerful and appropriate song. Basically they are transcriptiom errors from way back.
   
Verse 2- "Let every farmer hear my thrive", should be " Then every farmer here might thrive"
   
Last verse- "for all the riches great and small", should be "for all the righteous great and small".
   
I love this song for it's drama, and since moving to NZ, I also sing a doggerel "Come all you bold Kiwis", where each verse ends "in New Zealand" and appropriate contextual changes throughout.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Acorn4
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 04:15 AM

The song "Liverpool Town Where I Was Born" is now known as the "Centipede Song" from the line:-

"Where there are no trees or centipedes" (scented breeze).

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 08:31 AM

My daughter, ordering salad in a restaurant, was told that one of the dressings available was islamic vinaigrette.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,jaze
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 08:57 AM

"looking for a lover who won't blow my brother" is the funniest of all!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 10:56 AM

Not strictly a mondegreen, but a Spanish hotel's attempt at a menu in English:
Omelette, with a choice of "feelings"!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tangledwood
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 05:18 PM

Heard at a concert a couple of weeks ago (three of us heard it)
The song - Away, away by Weddings Parties Anything.

"I'll see you in CPR, I'll see you in black and white."

correct lyrics "I'll see you in sepia, I'll see you in black and white."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 05:06 PM

Jimi Hendrix' "S'cuse me while I kiss this guy." Predates gay pride movement.



Then there's a new tech song, "Send in the Clones". (isn't it rich?)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,chris green
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 10:42 AM

At a recent gig at a secondary school we had a complaint from an irate parent about obscene language and blasphemy in one of our songs. Apparently, although we'd sung 'Daddy Fox got up on a winter's night' she'd heard 'Daddy fucks God up on a winter's night'.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 04:53 PM

John Hartford - "Give us this day hors d'oeuvres in bed."

(Hope I spelled that right.)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 08:54 PM

Just got these from Facebook posts - not mondegreens from songs but mondegreens nonetheless:

Reported widely in Australia after a flood: "30,000 pigs SWEPT DOWNRIVER"
Many newspapers picked it up and ran with the story.
Actually the original person had reporting it had said, "30 sows and pigs were swept downriver."



Someone called a Wal-Mart bakery to order a decorated cake for a going-away party for someone who was moving.   The beautifully decorated cake was embossed with icing reading, between the lovely rosettes:

Best Wishes Suzanne
Under Neat that
We will Miss you


Can you figure out what the person ordering the cake actually said to the Wal-Mart employee taking the order?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 12:31 AM

Country Rose,
take me ho-o-o-me
to the pla-a-a-ce
I be-lo-o-o-ong ...


Jon Corelis
Windows of Air: Songs by Jon Corelis

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 30 May 12 - 01:00 AM

What Chicken Little was really yelling: Click here

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 May 12 - 10:10 PM

Lead on, Thou kinky turtle....
and never forget "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,jca
Date: 31 May 12 - 03:01 PM

On my first listening of Jim Moray's Low Culture album, the start of Leaving Australia (track 1) raised some eyebrows....

I sailed to the west with a schoolmate of mine
Together we shared the hot oil

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 31 May 12 - 03:04 PM

Heard on the radio, a cover version of "Light My Fire (original recording written and recorded by Jim Morrison and the Doors):

"...and our love become a funeal parlor..."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: JHW
Date: 22 Jan 13 - 02:34 PM

Met Office Samba Warning

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Jan 13 - 02:45 PM

Come on baby light my pyre.

Dave H

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ann N
Date: 22 Jan 13 - 02:58 PM

there's always Bach's Mass in B minor dedicated to " Agnes Day "    :D

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 22 Jan 13 - 03:23 PM

Until my wife and I watched a documentary on the Andrews Sisters we both thought (separately) that Bei Mir Bistu Shein was actually called My Dear Mister Shane.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Jan 13 - 06:46 PM

I was in the "My Dear Mister Shane" camp, too. I don't think I knew otherwise until the song came into discussion at Mudcat.

As Tattie Bogle says above, we have a doozie of a Mondegreen in the transcription of Dougie MacLean's "Caledonia" in the Digital Tradition:

I have kissed the ladies and left them crying
Stolen dreams, yes there's no denying
I have traveled hard with coattails flying
Somewhere in the wind

Here's a transcription of the MacLean recording that most of us have agreed upon

I have moved and kept on moving proved the points that I needed proving
Lost the friends that I needed losing found others on the way
I have tried and I've kept on trying stolen dreams, yes there's no denying
I have travelled hard, sometimes with conscience flying somewhere in the wind

Now usually when I hear a Mondegreen that I know comes from the Digital Tradition, I can look at the singer's notes and see the song in the familiar Digital Tradition format. But this month, a Scotland-born friend sang the "coattails" version of the song, and he sang from tattered, handwritten notes. He didn't remember the source, but didn't think it came from the DT. I'm guessing that he and the DT got the Mondegreen from a common source.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 25 Jan 13 - 11:24 AM

Thanks Joe, have Pm'ed you.

Forgive my aging memory if I've said this before but for years I thought it was "The Barnyards at break of day" (from my misheard Alex Campbell LP) instead of "Barnyards of Delgaty" (the latter being a wee place in Aberdeenshire). The song is usually spelled as I have there. tho' it's Delgatie Castle with an ie.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 25 Jan 13 - 06:29 PM

Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen----The bear missed the train (not exactly a precise monde)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 25 Jan 13 - 06:35 PM

Here's a naughty one: Vernon Duke's "Taking a Chance on Love"

"Here I go again, I hear those strumpets blow again"
"Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again."

Then there's "Send in the Clones". (Isn't it rich?)

Another naughty one from "I'm Gonna' Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" (early Fats Waller tune.

"Kisses on the bottom, you'll be glad you got 'em"
"Kisses at the bottom, you'll be glad you got 'em"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 25 Jan 13 - 06:37 PM

Another naughty one: "I'm in the nude for love" "I'm in the mood for love"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jan 13 - 08:52 PM

For the recent holidays I learned John Prine's 'Silent Night All Day Long'.

It begins:

"A pantry had a window..."

Along about the fourth listen I finally heard:

"A pine tree at a window..."
(in a house on a hill
The treetop angel is standing perfectly still
She's watching the shoppers walk through the snow
With their arms full of treasures
and their hearts all aglow...

Neat song.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 09:16 AM

Karen, in order to interpret mondegreens, you have to have what I call "mairzidoats ears". You have to hear them the way children naturally hear them.

Here goes:

1. (the famous Wildwood Flower)
"I will twine with my mingles of wavy black hair"
"I will twined midst the ringlets of my raven black hair"........ Maude Irving's original
(Also) "The pale emalita and eyes of dark blues)
          "The pale amanita and islips so blue" (no scientific mention of amanita in botanical journals.)

2. "Where the beer and the cantaloupe lay"
    "Where the deer and the antelope play".............Home on the Range

3.   "Free grapes and driving gloves"
      "Free Grace, undying love"...............................Ring Them Charming Bells

4.   (A variation on the Child Ballad, Lord Randal)
      "You picked a fine time to feed me loose eels"
      "You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.................Lucille
      (Kinda' fishy and maybe stretching a point)

5.   "You're infectious, blow your nose, honey snuffle Rose."
      "You're confection, goodness knows, Honeysuckle Rose..........Honeysuckle Rose

6.   "My country's misery, three cans of liver tea"
      (You know the rest).............................................................America

7. (for the sacrilegious here)
    "He maketh me to lie down in brown pastures"
      (Not sure this is a mondegreen but I thought funny)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 09:26 AM

Actually, it's not from The Sound of Mucous, but it's from South Passaic.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 09:27 AM

Did anyone hear it as Obama's song, "Send in the Drones"?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 11:03 AM

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,
With 500 children and a crop in the field.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 11:50 AM

This is such a long thread, I confess to not reading it all, but I did talk about the Barnyards of Delgaty back in 2009!
Has anyone mnetioned the story that Colum Sands tells about a Dutch fan who wanted him to sing "That one about the Hairy Tongue - everyone in Ireland knows that song".
Turns out it was the Black Velvet Band -
"And her hairy tongue over her shoulder....."!!!!!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 12:35 PM

And of course, that also happened to John Prine, requesting 'The Happy Enchilada'. ("half inch of water", and you think you're going to drown)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Michael
Date: 26 Jan 13 - 04:32 PM

Stringsinger: -
"The genus Amanita contains about 600 species of agarics including some of the most toxic known mushrooms found worldwide,." (Wikipedia)

I first encountered it as a lad reading Dorothy Sayers 'The Documents in the Case'.

Mike

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens? - Dylan
From: Genie
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 12:56 PM

When John McKutcheon played here in Portland a week ago, he said that as a child he heard Peter, Paul and Mary singing Dylan's "Blowing In The Wind" and when he was asked what he thought the song was about, he said, it's about "The ants are my friends."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 03:42 PM

Bonnie Tyler's ad for the BBC Children in Need Appeal rephrases her Holding Out For A Hero - but to what?

(Video: An 8 year-old's been baking fairy-cakes for the class):
"And they're going to be tough, and they're going to be sweet
And they're going to break lots of yer teeth, lots of yer teeth"

Or what?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Oct 13 - 12:49 AM

Carpenters sang "The Best love songs are written with a broken arm"? wll, its's not true!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,George Henderson
Date: 29 Oct 13 - 08:23 AM

My wife recently asked a singer after a performance of 3 score and ten what was meant by a Prussian gale (Approaching gale, resulting in roars of laughter all round.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Oct 13 - 09:12 AM

One of the oncology nurses was singing along with a pop hit with the line: "I will be your ruler, you can call me Queen Bee." She quite loudly sings, "You can call me GREEN BEAN."

Doesn't even come close to being sensible which is why I love mondegreens. After a few times (the line is repeated several times in the song) another nurse pointed out her mistake.


Spaw

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 Nov 13 - 05:23 AM

I love the bluegrass song "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive," especially Patty Loveless's version of it. But, DK why, her recording seems to lend itself to several mondegreens.

1. "Grandma sold our jeep and they moved out west .... ."
(Actual line: "Grandma sold out cheap and they out west ... ."

2, "To a farm where the big rich men knew their wives ... "
(Actual line: "To a farm where the big Richland River winds ... ."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Genie
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 02:59 AM

Blowin' In The Wind, as heard by a youngster recently:

"The ants are my friend .... ."

Subject: Mondegreens posted in Internet lyrics sites
From: Genie
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 03:06 AM

The internet song lyrics sites are replete with typos, spelling and punctuation errors, and just plain misheard lyrics—some of them pretty silly or funny.

Today I found these two gems, for Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing On My Mind":

"As I lie in my bed in the mornin' without you, without you,
Every song in my breast dies of boredom ... ."

and

"You've got reasons a-plenty for going,
This I know, this I know,
For the weeds have been steadily glowing ... ."

(I might get out of there quickly too if the weeds were steadily glowing.)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 02:16 PM

I can recall seeing a line in the "Wild Rover" written as

"I went into a nailhouse I used to frequent"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 16 - 01:32 PM

Well, I grew up with the Kingston Trio's "Sold Out" album and its medley of two songs from Tahiti. In Tahitian, which is to say one of the Polynesian language groups. Well outside my area of expertise.

Is it a mondegreen when a kid desperately fabricates English from listening to a non-English lyric?

The chorus of the second song in the medley begins with a chant:

Toe- rau E! Toe- rau E! Toe- rau E! Toe- rau E!

And for no particular reason, I heard:

He took it a-way!
He took it a-way!
He took it a-way!
He took it a-way!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 04:14 AM

From a ballad sung at Sunday's session (can't remember which one) - "he slipped his arm around her waist" was heard as "he SLIT his arm......"! It was a ballad with a gory ending.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,dáithí
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 05:11 AM

Not strictly a mondegreen I guess, but I always find the line "and the hair upon her shoulders in jet black ringlets fell" (Lakes of Pontchartrain)amusing.

Do many women have hair growing upon their shoulder to that extent? :-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 06:10 AM

Not a Mondegreen as such (more a deliberate change made in lyrics to sound funny or suggestive) from "The Lakes of Pontchartrain"):

If it wasn't for alligators, I'd sleep out in the nude

or from "The Wild Rover"

I went to an alehouse, I used to frequent
And I told the Landlady the Barman was Bent

or from "Lucille"

You picked a fine team to leave me, Lucille
With two hungry children, to take a Crap in the Field

I am sure "As Shepherds washed their socks by night" was just a joke, though I doubt if Norma Waterson was the originator; I remember hearing a version which went:

As Shepherds washed their socks by night
They had on I.T.V.
The Angel of the Lord came down
And switched to B.B.C.

(This dates from the time there were only 2 channels in Britain, BBC and ITV). Now there are hundreds of channels (but very few programmes worth watching).

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Snuffy
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 06:18 AM

Well, I suppose it's better than having a hairy tongue over your shoulder

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: AlbertsLion
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 06:15 PM

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=7240981&q

in my song 'Shipping Out' there's a line referring to tankers "and they burn your last cargo before you get back".

Wendy, who plays violin on the whole band version, heard it as "they burn your escargot before etc" !!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: AlbertsLion
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 06:20 PM

a href="http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=7240981&q"

I think it'll turn blue this time, fingers crossed!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Mar 17 - 03:13 PM

The other night, at a pub sing, I sang the old Sunday-school song "Brighten the Corner Where You Are", which contains the line "Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar". Someone who wanted to sing along looked it up on his smartphone, and afterward showed me "Someone far from Harvard...".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: mayomick
Date: 12 Mar 17 - 02:54 PM

The valedictory composed by Mary Ross's heart-broken suitor after an angry door was slammed in his face by the Ross family of Dungloe

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Fred Maslan
Date: 12 Mar 17 - 03:55 PM

Talk to the angels in disguise.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Merritt
Date: 15 Mar 17 - 09:34 PM

My son, at aged 7 or so, thought the Beatles were singing "Happy as a raptor in the marketplace" on Obladi-Oblada.

Took me a few hearings to realize that Pat Benatar was not singing, "Love is a bag of cheese" but rather "Love is a Battlefield" in the early-80s.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 16 Mar 17 - 04:30 AM

"The valedictory composed by Mary Ross's heart-broken suitor after an angry door was slammed in his face by the Ross family of Dungloe"

You'll have to explain that (I'm sure it's obvious to people who know the song you are thinking of)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 16 Mar 17 - 06:59 AM

Discovered yesterday that my work colleague, of a similar age to me, has always thought that that the lyric to the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's "Canyons of Your Mind" that goes:

'Cross the mountains of your chest
I will stick a Union Jack

was actually:

'Cross the mountains of your chest
I will lick up onion jam


Que??? Had to make him listen to 2 YouTube versions before he reluctantly conceded than onion jam does not feature in this song!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Snuffy
Date: 16 Mar 17 - 07:12 AM

I always took it to be :

'Cross the mountains of your chest
I will sticker you with jam!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: JMB
Date: 16 Mar 17 - 10:08 AM

I have to listen very carefully to the lyrics of many songs. I often mishear them. In the late 90s, there was a song called "Jump, Jive and Wail." I was thinking are they singing "Drunk driving" instead of "Jump Jivin'", and I thought that that's not very appropriate to be singing and upbeat song about drunk driving. O, my.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 02:25 PM

Have to respond to JMB:
the song in question is vintage 1950's
with Louis Prima and Keely Smith, God be good to them both.


Many thanks to Thomas Stern for his
thread about Jean Ritchie recordings,
because he liberated me from a childhood Mondegreen.

On one dialogue between a little girl and her father,
Jean Ritchie sings (now that I know better)
"Poppy, buy me a Big Glass Doll, Do, Poppy, Do!"
for some reason, all those years I heard

"Poppy, buy me a Big Black Star..."

so that clears that up!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: peteglasgow
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 02:58 PM

.....i come looking for a job but i get no offers
just a come-on from the horse on 7th avenue
there were times.....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 04:46 AM

Graceland-Paul Simon."....as if I didn't know my own bed, as if I didn't noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead". I still think he sings "...the way she brushed her hair and farted."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 12:44 PM

When I first heard one of Ed Sheeran`s recent songs I thought the first line of the refrain was "I`m in love with your sheepdog"!! My wife put me right!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 01 Mar 18 - 07:52 PM

Give Pete a chance

I thought it was the Beatles' way of apologizing to Pete Best.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 02 Mar 18 - 01:49 PM

@John from Kemsing: we play a jig called "My Darling's Asleep" - usually known as "My Darling's a sheep"!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 05 Mar 18 - 06:52 AM

It was only about three years ago that I realised that I had misheard a line from The Beach Boys hit Barbara Ann.
For many years I heard "went to a dance,looking for romance" as
"went to a dance looking for a man" and thinking it was rather odd,
the penny took a long time to drop.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens? Copper
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 09:16 AM

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Neil D
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 11:10 PM

Red Hot Chili Peppers sang:
With the birds I'll share this lonely view

My friend John heard:
A birdless shed is a lonely view

Equally expressive, IMO.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Miranda
Date: 19 Feb 19 - 12:53 AM

This probably isn't too big of a mondegreen, but I recently found a few that I heard personally in the Braes o' Killiecrankie. The biggest one I misheard was the line: "Or I had fed an Atholl gled", which heard as "But I had fought at Atholl Glen". The "Bauld Pitcur" I also heard as "Ball pit curve".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,johnmc
Date: 20 Feb 19 - 09:55 AM

Neither Oxbridge team on Uni Challenge last time knew what they are called.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Karen Impola
Date: 19 Jan 20 - 02:42 AM

I knew there would be a mondegreen thread here! Actually read through the whole thing to make sure these aren't in it already. I laughed a lot.

As a child, I sang the first line of "The Friendly Beasts" as "Jesus our brother, kind of good . . ."

For years, I was vaguely wondering who Arthur Penn was, in the song "Creeping Jane" - "She never saw a mare nor a a gelding in her life that she valued at the worth of Arthur Penn." Then one day it dawned on me: half a pin!

I recently looked at the lyric sheet that came with Richard Thompson's "Henry the Human Fly", and discovered that it says "It's bitter the NEED of the poor ditching boy." I've been singing MEAD for over three-quarters of my life. I like my version better.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 08:53 AM

Our rather deaf dance club chairman was puzzled when a Playford dance was announced that he heard as 'Open Knees'
Can you decode?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Reinhard
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 09:19 AM

Oh Pennies?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: RTim
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 10:17 AM

Not a Mondegreen- but when I recorded my version of John Barleycorn - I did it in one really good take - except I sang the line - "Drowned him between two stones" instead of the correct - "Ground him between two stones..."
I had to go back in and sing "Ground" and they slotted it into the recording......

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 02:22 PM

On youtube... take a lok at the Karaoke versions of The Bee Gees 'Saved by the Bell. The bit where Robin Gibb sings 'Now I walk down Heartbreak Lane' has been interpreted as ' Now I walk down our great lane'.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mitch the Bass
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 05:19 PM

“Our rather deaf dance club chairman was puzzled when a Playford dance was announced that he heard as 'Open Knees'
Can you decode?”

Oaken Leaves?
Also known as The Milkmaid’s Bob. Goodness knows who Bob was or maybe the milkmaid was called Bob.

Mitch

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Michael
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 06:14 PM

'The Milkmaid's Bob' is a peal played on milk bottles.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Chris Amos
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 03:24 AM

Until recently I thought that the old man in the Christmas Carol Good King Wenceslas lived in the village of Goodly Hence.

“Sire he lives at Goodly Hence.”....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 04:55 AM

Yes Mitch. Oaken Leaves, aka Open Knees

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 26 Oct 20 - 11:22 PM

Slim Dusty was one Australia's greatest country singers.

One of his biggest hits was G'day, G'day lyrics with cords written by Ron Fairburn,but often said to be written by Slim. video of Ron Fairburn's original words to G'day G'day

The line "in the land of the cockatoo, cork hats and the didgeridoo" has become "in the land of the cockatoo, polecats and the didgeridoo" on many sites - pole cats in genius.com & on least 25 other lyrics sites. ps, We don't have polecats in Australia!

Cork hats are hats with corks hanging off the brim to discourage flies. Alleged to have been worn in fly-infested areas back in the olden days, & now only seen in souvenir shops & on tourist heads.

sandra

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 05:21 AM

dress me up in my oil skins and jdhpurs instead of oilskins and jumpers, fiddlers green j connolly

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jos
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 05:38 AM

When my son was little I used to recite and sing rhymes to him.
One day he said, "Do the one about the man who found a sixpence under a crocodile."

[There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile, and found a crooked sixpence under a crooked stile.]

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 07:51 AM

Where the ecko knocks the cornflakes

Amang the whinny knowe.


Dave H

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 08:32 AM

Echo FFS David.

Dave H

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: leeneia
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 01:03 PM

I recently heard a song where for a long time I thought "the land and shore" as "the Atlantic shore." I kept listening for a reference to the Pacific.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 10:03 PM

I can't get out of my head,
the mondegreen described by Catspaw49, God be good to him,
not long before he passed.

He was in fact being treated by the oncology nurses at the time.
And something came up about Lorde's hit single 'Royals.'

In the choruse, Lorde sings,
"You can call me Queen Bee ... "

and if you recall Spaw's post, one of the nurses
was absolutely positively convinced that this line went,

"You can call me Green Bean"

I really miss that ...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 10:07 PM

It's on this here thread, in fact,
dated 29 October, 2013.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 28 Oct 20 - 07:43 AM

This is wellworth a listen! Peter Kay from UK misheard lyrics on popular songs.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Nov 20 - 10:03 AM

Caught (accidentally) a line from the opening credits to Happy Days:

Goodbye crazy guys!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Gallus Moll
Date: 07 Dec 20 - 08:00 AM

There's a discussion on Fiddles in Scotland about Scottish and Irish tunes that are played in both Scottish and Irish sessions (many tunes have two names - a Scottish one and an Irish one!)
I did have a chortle at one which was a Strathspey (Scottish dance) which had the Irish title Graf Spee!!!!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 10:44 AM

Ok this one just happened: I found I had a French version of I met her in Venezuela, in which I heard the line Her parents delivered grain (ses parents livraient du grain). Looked up the words... That line was Separating the chaff from the grain (Séparant l'ivraie du grain).

The two are completely pronounced the same.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 05:08 AM

The Chemical Worker's Song, aka Process Man, includes a line usually sung as "I've worked and breathed among the fumes that trail across the sky". I have also heard it sung as "I've worked and breathed ammonia fumes that trail across the sky", which seems to me to make better sense. But which did Ron Angel actually write?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Reinhard
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:56 AM

Listen to Ron Angel on Chemical Workers Song - Ron Angel (original version). He sings 'among the fumes'.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 05:45 PM

Mrrzy: Likewise, I have heard tell of a child asking Edith Piaf for her song about the pink airplane (l'avion rose).

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jan 21 - 01:57 PM

Joe, that cracked me up.

Looking up words to sing today I found that Samson fought 1000 battles, not where the crimson fell and lost as I've heard it all my life, but wearing crimson flannel drawers.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: BrooklynJay
Date: 25 Jan 21 - 07:52 PM

Remember the '60s song Incense and Peppermints by the group Strawberry Alarm Clock? There's a line throw your pride to one side which I always thought was:

Throwing up by the wayside.

And so it goes...


Jay

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 11:58 AM

Thanks to a meme seen on FaceBook: Here
I finally know it's "Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 09:55 PM

One for Joe here. Sang this at school for ten years at least without understanding the last lines at all:

"Faith of our Fathers, holy faith
We will be true to veetle death
We will be true to veetle death"

I could never bring myself to ask the priests what a "veetle death" was because I thought I was supposed to know...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Mar 21 - 11:07 AM

We will be true to veetle death
We will be true to Thee 'til death?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 10:59 AM

Who built the ark? No one, no one, I sang as a small child, impressed with the progressive, I thought, Baptist missionaries...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 11:30 AM

Got it in one, Nigel. Blessed art thou a monk swimming...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jos
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 12:02 PM

Some years ago I had an Abbey National bank account. I decided to try telephone banking and was greeted with:
"You have reached Abbey National spanking service."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 02:29 PM

From "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild"
Pity mice implicitly

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Gealt
Date: 16 Mar 21 - 07:17 AM

We will be true to D till debt.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Bill Turnpenny
Date: 16 Mar 21 - 11:21 AM

Dance, dance, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the damp settee.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: PHJim
Date: 18 Mar 21 - 07:11 PM

I'm not sure that this qualifies as a mondegreen, but -

The CTV Drama channel has a blue screen with a warning before many CSI type shows. If you don't read the screen, but just listen to the woman's voice reading the warning, it sounds like she's saying, "This program contains violence, coarse language, amateur subject matter."
If you read the screen, it says, "This program contains violence, coarse language, and mature subject matter."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Mar 21 - 04:09 PM

New Directions is pronounced just like Nude Erections

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 30 Mar 21 - 04:58 AM

Listening to Simon & Garfunkel "The Boxer" on Radio 2.
I must have been thinking of the numerous Zombie films as I'm sure I heard Seeking out the poorer quarters where the rabid people go

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Jones
Date: 11 Nov 21 - 04:07 PM

Listening today for the nth time to John Mayall's "Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton" album I suddenly realised that, in the song "Little Girl", he intends us to understand a comma before the last word of "I'm gonna give you a love child". I had always thought it a rather a bold lyric for 1965 or whenever it was.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Nov 21 - 06:21 PM

Our Father who art in heaven
Harold be thy name...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 12 Nov 21 - 09:00 AM

I think I've cured my tendency to Spoonerise the second line of The Next Market Day.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 21 - 04:38 AM

Re. this verse of Paul Simon's fabulous song Graceland.

As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead

I keep hearing him sing that
last line as
"The way she brushed her hair and farted"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Nov 21 - 05:32 AM

Someone recently posted on a facebook thread that "she loved it from the button of her heart"!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 03:06 PM

Hi Taconicus, I'm reopening this old mondegreen thread so that we can have a funny happy chat for Christmas.

My problem is that I can't understand - or remember - song lyrics and these days I set the closed captions on the TV so that I can "hear" what they are singing. Having said that, sometimes I see the funniest, laugh-out-loud things written on the captions. I'll try to remember some of the other most recent ones I've seen but this one made the news here in Australia:

'Ken Behrens'

To briefly explain, Canberra is our national capital and people who live there are referred to as Canberrans - pronounced Can'-berrans with the accent on the first syllable, often with a higher pitch on "Can" going down slightly in pitch for each of the next two syllables. (Another note, just to confuse you Canberra can be pronounce as Can'-berra, with the same accent and pitch as above or Can'-bra. The mondegreen doesn't work with the second pronunciation although even people who use the second pronunciation probably still say Can'-berrans. Confused? Never mind. Just have a laugh at the caption mistake and the resulting fun people have had from it.)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 04:34 PM

good one, Helen, not having a TV, I missed it way back in August!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: cnd
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 04:52 PM

I used to know someone who swore emphatically that the words to "Walking In a Winter Wonderland" went: "Later on, we'll perspire As we sit by the fire" -- it makes sense semantically, but not much else.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 05:04 PM

I have been singing for years and have always felt I got them words right. Just recently, days ago actually, I learned that Sam Cooke wasn't singing about a guy dancing in Chicken Slacks but he was dancing with The Chick in Slacks.

Live and loin.

Don

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 06:21 PM

Another Aussie classic mondegreen:

Manfred Mann - Blinded by the Light

I don't know how many people here in Oz heard the correct lyrics of that song from 1975.

If you say the words "wrapped up like a douche" everyone knows which song you are referring to.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 08:02 PM

I'm so tired
I just got hired
and it feels just like many times before

Not a mondegreen, but I heard this in my head out of nowhere.

You know Boebert and Gomert and Steve King and Marge Greene
Hitler and Himmler old nazis and Blitzkrieg
But do you recall
The most famous Nazi of all?
Donald the Red-Nosed Nazi
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it grows
All of the other Nazis
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Donald
Join in any Nazi games
Then one foggy 'lection night
Bannon came to say
"Donald, with your nose so bright
Won't you sleigh Clinton tonight?"
Then how the nazis loved him
As they shouted out with glee
"Donald the Red-Nosed Nazi
You'll go down in history"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 08 Dec 21 - 02:05 PM

An interesting point about closed captions on TV: in Oz and maybe elsewhere the initial process is automated speech-to-text and then the human is there to pick up on errors and correct them, so machines can make mondegreens as well as humans.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Taconicus
Date: 08 Dec 21 - 09:12 PM

I'm not surprised that in the ballad "The Bonny Earl o' Moray" the lyric, "They hae ta'en the Earl o' Murray and laid him on the green" was often misheard and repeated as, "They hae ta'en the Earl o' Murray and Lady Mondegreen."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 21 - 09:31 PM

Re. Don Meixner’s post above.
I sang chicken slacks for years too, even though it didn’t make sense to me - then one day I got that light bulb moment.

Also, in the song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” I thought the line was “Can I believe the magic of your size”. The actual word is ‘sighs” - and there’s me thinking that ….. hmm ;-)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 09 Dec 21 - 04:02 AM

I first heard it as "magic of your thighs".

Freud would have a field day!

Robin

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Anne Lister sans cookie
Date: 09 Dec 21 - 06:22 PM

In the Musicians Union magazine which arrived today I see there is an Olive Mondegreen listed as a musician. I suspect a nom de guerre.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GerryM
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 01:36 AM

Olive Hillman Mondegreen has a web presence, https://prsfoundation.com/profiles/olive-hillman-mondegreen/

No relation to Olive, the other reindeer.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 12 Dec 21 - 11:32 PM

I was just watching Episode 15, 2009 of Spicks and Specks, an Oz music/comedy quiz show. The Closed Captions showed not one but two mondegreens.

When a short excerpt of the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody was played the caption showed "Miss Miller" instead of "bismillah", and when a Prince song was mentioned it was captioned as "Raspberry Parade" and not "Raspberry Beret".

I can't tell you whether it was a human or a digital captioner, but in a music show it made it twice as funny.

I need the captions on that show because they all talk so fast and excitedly that I miss the answers to the quiz questions.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Dec 21 - 03:50 AM

How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees - "And you come to me in a submarine…"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Greum
Date: 27 Dec 21 - 03:03 PM

I Live Not Where I Love

"My heart Airfixed in your breast"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 28 Dec 21 - 08:40 PM

On a recent music Zoom, Pete Grassby misheard Bethlehem as "Battery Hen" during two verses of a carol. "O, Little Town of Battery Hen", anyone? C'mon, SOMEone's gotta write it, surely??

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Helen
Date: 28 Dec 21 - 11:41 PM

"O, Little Town of Battery Hen"

My Mum, now deceased, grew up on a large chook farm. No matter how hard I tried to convince her she would never watch the Aardman Animations movie Chicken Run. It brought back too many overwhelming childhood memories.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 29 Dec 21 - 06:18 AM

Any Dylan fans ever wondered why Rosemary took a cabbage into town? (Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 Apr 22 - 10:24 AM

It's really easy to hear mondegreens in the Seals & Crofts song
"Purple Hand" from their "Down Home" LP,
the last one they recorded before they got a Warner Bros contract,
in the early 1970's.


I heard
"No mortal eye, no voice can hear this great clandestine plan"
which is nonsense, of course ... ought to be
"No mortal eye, no voice, no ear Escaped the destined plan ... "


THen in the second stanza:
I heard
"This is it, it ought to be the touch of hands abroad"
and it ought to have been
"This is it: Get off your knees, look what your hands have wrought"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 22 - 11:40 AM

Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream

I heard

"And guns and swords and unicorns
Were scattered on the ground."

rather than

"And guns and swords and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 24 May 22 - 04:06 PM

More Seals & Crofts, a song titled "Today"
from the same album, Down Home.

I thought the lyric was:

In a beautiful ring heaven
And we were one
And all the world was
A beautiful place to be lost in


When in fact they wrote/sang:

Then a beautiful thing happened
And we were one
And all the world was
A beautiful face to be lost in

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 22 - 05:06 PM

"I Just Can't Get Enough" by "Depeche Mode" was on TV this morning, as a tribute to the keyboard player who has just passed away. I remember hearing it played over a sound system in a supermarket last year, and for a moment thought he was singing "I Just Can't Get It Up" :)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 28 May 22 - 03:28 PM

A friend of mine was into Paddy Tunney about 30 years ago & I loaned her one of Paddy's LPs- 'The Wild Bees' Nest' I think.

One of the songs was 'The Green Fields of Canada' containing a line explaining why the Irish had left 'The lands are gone to rushes'

-next time I saw her, she said it was a lovely LP but could I explain why, in the 'Green Fields of Canada' all the lambs had gone to Russia......

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 28 May 22 - 03:37 PM

As A geordie singer, I lived in Dover in the late 70s. I was delighted to find an excellent Shepherd Neame pub, the 'Malvern' in my own street, run by a Scottish couple and with a coal fire and a piano.

Myself & friends had many a good pub session there & I did of course act as a sort of missionary to these darkest parts of Kent & often sang the 'Blaydon Races' on a Saturday night (not all of it!).

Anyway, one night a local man was very complimentary and asked, in an East Kent accent, 'could yer sing that one yer did larst week?... you know the one about the bleedin' races'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Jeri
Date: 28 May 22 - 08:00 PM

It's not a mondegreen, but it's popular. I heard a supposedly smart newscaster say something didn't "jive" with something else. "Jive is (amongst other things) a type of dance which some guy named Gordon Lightfoot used to hold the record for. Not THAT Gordon Lightfood, I'm sure, but maybe that's my folk cred.
It's "jibe".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 May 22 - 12:16 PM

The Yiddish popular song "Mei Bir Bist Du Schoen" was sometimes thought of by the musicians who played it as "The Bear Missed the Train".

Jerome Kern's lovely tune might be misconstrued as "The Song Issue".

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 May 22 - 12:18 PM

I would guess that "Guantamera" has been cited as "One Ton Tomato" in earlier posts.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GerryM
Date: 31 May 22 - 09:33 PM

Whilst reporting a mondegreen, Stringsinger has fallen into a spoonerism. "Mei Bir" should be "Bei Mir". [and not to be confused with "My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer....]

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Jun 22 - 02:03 AM

My daughter did not speak Spanish but she learned a line or two of Guantanamera:

Once in a meadow, oh, oh, oh, once in a meadow....

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Jul 22 - 06:57 AM

Ok looking for songs about getting through hardship and I thought of I am a rock, which, unbeknownst to me, has this line about love:

It's laughter and it's loving I disdain

Which for the last oh 50+ years I have heard -and sung- as

It's laughter and it's nothing like disdain

Which I kinda like better.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jul 22 - 09:47 PM

In his version of “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, Willie Nelson sings “as the mirror told its tale”.
He obviously didn’t pick up on the original lyrics’ connection with Pilgrims Progress.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 18 Jul 22 - 04:55 PM

Canterbury Tales, surely?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 18 Jul 22 - 05:29 PM

Maybe more of a typo or predictive text at work here, but in an email I was copied into, one friend telling another that she would get more details with the next massage.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 22 - 11:38 PM

Sorry. Senior moment, Mark. Yes, I meant Canterbury Tales. Duh.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jul 22 - 09:26 AM

Also off topic but I recall an ad for Wives For Women that ended with "Call [number]. Leave mess."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 27 Jul 22 - 10:43 PM

Smedley - PM
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 10:19 AM

Thanks to Simon & Garfunkel's enunciation, as a kid I always thought the second line of Scarborough Fair was "Parsley, saydrels, merry and thyme".

For years I assumed saydrels and merry were obscure varieties of herb.


I always took it as
Parsley, Sage rows, Mary & Thyme

I rather like 'saydrel' though.

[now if I ever sing it I put the first syllables on the beat and make a point of taking a breath before 'rosemary']

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 28 Jul 22 - 08:31 AM

Jim Seals, of happy memory, wrote and sang
"We May Never Pass This Way Again," as half of Seals and Crofts.

There is a later recording (2004-ish) in which his diction
makes Seals sound as though he were singing
We May Never Pass the Sway Again . . .

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 13 Nov 22 - 11:53 AM

Khloe Kardashian, in a TV commercial: I heard, "There's nothing glamorous about my brains." What she actually said was, "There's nothing glamorous about migraines."

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Jun 23 - 07:57 PM

Being from UK, where we have Motorways, A roads, and B roads, in order of size and upkeep (to some extent) I was always confused by 'Jambalaya'

"I'm gonna go an' take the B road down the bayou"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Jun 23 - 08:15 PM

All these years I thought that
Gordon Lightfoot's Carefree Highway
was
Every Highway (let me slip away slip away on you)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,bernieandred
Date: 17 Jun 23 - 03:57 PM

Heard a pub singer in Ireland sing Paper Roses.
In her version she sang "A hape (heap) of roses".
A cabaret singer we knew would do a very serious & dramatic version of Galway Bay, but instead of watching the "barefoot gossoons at their play", he was watching the barefoot goslings.
I never corrected him.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 17 Jun 23 - 07:25 PM

A couple of clowns turned up at Catford Folk Club and attempted to sing 'Poor Ditching Boy' with the chorus of 'With her scheming idle ways she left me for an oaf. They then tried to get Oaf to rhyme with Blood.
You can't make anything foolproof because fools are ingenious. (Ambrose Bierce)

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,MichaelKM
Date: 21 Jun 23 - 07:35 AM

Heard on BBC Radio 4 a few days ago, a little girl's prayer: 'In the name of the farmer, under the Sun, and the whole experience. Amen.'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 23 - 09:22 AM

In the name of the father the son and in the hole he goes.

Dave H

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: PHJim
Date: 22 Jun 23 - 01:15 PM

From: GUEST,Alta Rigo - PM
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:18 AM

Until I saw the words to "Mr. Bojangles" in print, I thought one of the lines was, "He looked to me to be the eyes of Ish as the smoke ran out."
I did not know what ancient deity "Ish" was, but I pictured a tropical island with a huge stone idol with smoke and fire pouring out of its eyes.

Now that I have seen it printed as " ... the eyes of age, as he spoke right out," I have little trouble hearing it correctly.

__________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did sing, "And the smoke ran out," on their UNCLE CHARLIE & HIS DOG TEDDY LP. This was a true mondegreen. I heard them years later and they sang Jerry Jeff's correct lyrics.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 23 Jun 23 - 08:46 AM

https://youtu.be/LmtufaiX6QM    Spot the mondegreen!!

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 26 Jun 23 - 07:38 AM

An old friend of mine who has now passed, came from Liverpool. He spoke of a ditty that they sung as children whilst skipping.........He wrote it down as 'Ramsey totes and dozey totes and little lamsey tivey', which is what he beieved it to be into his forties. In discussion then about the old days, the truth came ou that it should be 'Rams eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy'

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Dave Hanson
Date: 26 Jun 23 - 07:57 AM

It should be,

Mares eat oats and does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy


Dave H

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 26 Jun 23 - 08:06 AM

> "Ramsey totes ...."

Fading memory suggests that the offending song was composed and borderline-mispronounced on purpose, with misunderstanding aforethought. If it's intended to be misheard, does that discount it as a Mondegreen?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 Sep 23 - 11:52 PM

The Oxford to Hampton Railway

In Alcester lives a bonny lass / I think they call her Nancy,
Says she, a trip upon the line / Greatly would really please my fancy.
I will ride by steam and work by steam, / By steam I’ll on be hurried,
And when I can a husband find / By steam I will be married

It has become the opposite;
She'll go by steam, she'll come by steam, / By steam she'll unbehurried,
And if she do a husband find / By steam they will be married
and then;
She'll go by steam, she'll come by steam, by steam she'll be unhurried,
And if she do a husband find, by steam she will be married

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Oct 23 - 02:19 PM

Someday Soon Ian Tyson 1963 (as recorded by Ian and Sylvia on Northern Journey 1964)

My parents cannot stand him ‘cause he works the rodeo
They say “he’s not your kind, he’ll leave you cryin’ ”
But if he asks I’ll follow him down the toughest row to hoe
Someday soon, goin’ with him, someday soon

Judy Collins said, "One night in California Steve Stills and I were singing it in the car on the way in from Topanga Canyon. I said: "That's beautiful." He said: "Why don't you record it?" So we did."
She recorded it at Elektra Sound Recorders, Los Angeles in 1968 for the album Who knows where the time goes. She sang these words on the Smothers Brothers show in 1969.

My parents they can't stand him ‘cause he works the rodeo
My father says that he will leave you cryin’ ”
I would follow him down the toughest road I know
Someday soon, goin’ with him, someday soon

The song is based on Ian Tyson's romance with Sylvia Fricker from Chatham, Ontario. My Uncle Peter and Mr Fricker, Sylvia's father, went to a bar every Friday night. Uncle Peter said that all he talked about was the 'pseudo-cowboy" who had run off with his daughter. Judy Collins sang it beautifully last night at the RNCM in Manchester, complete with pedal steel guitar. She said: "I want you to know that you're looking at the American Idol of 1956!"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Greum
Date: 09 Oct 23 - 02:59 PM

I have just looked at one of my songs on YouTube, The Jovial Broom Man, and thought I would try the Show Transcript option.

It interprets Hey Jolly Broom Man as Hey Charlie Brown!

ROFL

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 05:58 PM

A kiddledy divy too, wouldn't you?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Og
Date: 14 Oct 23 - 10:59 AM

He whispered "sweet peas" to me...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 06:32 AM

Howabout these from 'Britains got Talent.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Nov 23 - 12:26 AM

Listened to a song I hadn't listened to in so long I forgot I knew the right words.... so it's an old one, but here you are:

We've come a long way since we last shook hands, still got a long way to go, couldn't see the flowers when we last shook hands, couldn't see the flowers on account of the snow.

I hear it as Left Japan, not Last Shook Hands. Radically different visuals...


We've come a long way since we left Japan, still got a long way to go, couldn't see the flowers when we left Japan, couldn't see the flowers on account of the snow.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Dancer with bruised knees album.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Og
Date: 13 Nov 23 - 09:51 AM

Through the night without light from a bulb.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 Sep 23 - 11:52 PM

The Oxford to Hampton Railway

In Alcester lives a bonny lass / I think they call her Nancy,
Says she, a trip upon the line / Greatly would really please my fancy.
I will ride by steam and work by steam, / By steam I’ll on be hurried,
And when I can a husband find / By steam I will be married

It has become the opposite;
She'll go by steam, she'll come by steam, / By steam she'll unbehurried,
And if she do a husband find / By steam they will be married
and then;
She'll go by steam, she'll come by steam, by steam she'll be unhurried,
And if she do a husband find, by steam she will be married

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Oct 23 - 02:19 PM

Someday Soon Ian Tyson 1963 (as recorded by Ian and Sylvia on Northern Journey 1964)

My parents cannot stand him ‘cause he works the rodeo
They say “he’s not your kind, he’ll leave you cryin’ ”
But if he asks I’ll follow him down the toughest row to hoe
Someday soon, goin’ with him, someday soon

Judy Collins said, "One night in California Steve Stills and I were singing it in the car on the way in from Topanga Canyon. I said: "That's beautiful." He said: "Why don't you record it?" So we did."
She recorded it at Elektra Sound Recorders, Los Angeles in 1968 for the album Who knows where the time goes. She sang these words on the Smothers Brothers show in 1969.

My parents they can't stand him ‘cause he works the rodeo
My father says that he will leave you cryin’ ”
I would follow him down the toughest road I know
Someday soon, goin’ with him, someday soon

The song is based on Ian Tyson's romance with Sylvia Fricker from Chatham, Ontario. My Uncle Peter and Mr Fricker, Sylvia's father, went to a bar every Friday night. Uncle Peter said that all he talked about was the 'pseudo-cowboy" who had run off with his daughter. Judy Collins sang it beautifully last night at the RNCM in Manchester, complete with pedal steel guitar. She said: "I want you to know that you're looking at the American Idol of 1956!"

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,Greum
Date: 09 Oct 23 - 02:59 PM

I have just looked at one of my songs on YouTube, The Jovial Broom Man, and thought I would try the Show Transcript option.

It interprets Hey Jolly Broom Man as Hey Charlie Brown!

ROFL

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 05:58 PM

A kiddledy divy too, wouldn't you?

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Og
Date: 14 Oct 23 - 10:59 AM

He whispered "sweet peas" to me...

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Nov 23 - 12:26 AM

Listened to a song I hadn't listened to in so long I forgot I knew the right words.... so it's an old one, but here you are:

We've come a long way since we last shook hands, still got a long way to go, couldn't see the flowers when we last shook hands, couldn't see the flowers on account of the snow.

I hear it as Left Japan, not Last Shook Hands. Radically different visuals...


We've come a long way since we left Japan, still got a long way to go, couldn't see the flowers when we left Japan, couldn't see the flowers on account of the snow.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Dancer with bruised knees album.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 06:32 AM

Howabout these from 'Britains got Talent.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: The Og
Date: 13 Nov 23 - 09:51 AM

Through the night without light from a bulb.

Subject: RE: any new mondegreens?
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 23 Nov 23 - 09:22 AM

I've been having difficulty with the hit tune Heat Waves.
Looked it up and the real lyrics say:

Heat waves been fakin' me out
Can't make you happier now


whereas I was fumbling around thinking it went:
Heat waves man thicken me out
Can't make you happy or not

sigh . . .