Mondegreen

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song.^[1][2] American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.^[3] "Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008.^[4][5] The phenomenon is not limited to English, with examples cited by Fyodor Dostoyevsky,^[6] in the Hebrew song Háva Nagíla (Let’s be Happy)",^[7] and in Bollywood movies.^[8]

A closely related category is the soramimi, which are songs that produce different meanings from those originally intended when interpreted in another language.^[9]

Etymology

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O'Moray". She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". Wright explained the need for a new term:

The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.

Other examples Wright suggested are:

• Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life ("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm 23)
• The wild, strange battle cry "Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward." ("Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward," from "The Charge of the Light Brigade")

Psychology

Human beings perceive in part based on past experiences, including what words we hear. We are more likely to see or hear what we expect to see or hear than something completely unexpected, or something that is not part of our normal everyday experiences. For example, in everyday speech, one would be more likely to hear somebody recalling how they "kissed this guy" than that they were about to "kiss the sky".^[10] On the other hand, Steven Pinker has observed that "The interesting thing about mondegreens is that the mishearings are generally less plausible than the intended lyrics."^[11]

James Gleick says that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Although people have no doubt misconstrued song lyrics for as long as songs have been sung, without improved communication and the standardization of language which accompanies it, there would have been no way for this shared experience to have been recognized and discussed.^[12] Since time immemorial, songs have been passed on by word of mouth. Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a folk song repeated in a country where people are unfamiliar with some of the references in the song will often be transformed. A classic example is The Golden Vanity, which contains the line "As she sailed upon the lowland sea."; carried to Appalachia by immigrants from England, over generations, not knowing what the lowland sea refers to, singers transformed "lowland" to "lonesome".^[13]

The creation of mondegreens may be driven in part by a phenomenon akin to cognitive dissonance, as it is psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song (in a language you are fluent in) and not be able to make out the words. In his article on mondegreens, Steven Connor wrote:

But, though mishearings may appear pleasingly or even subversively to sabotage sense, they are in fact in essence negentropic, which is to say, they push up the slope from random noise to the redundancy of voice, moving therefore from the direction of nonsense to sense, of nondirection to direction. They seem to represent the intolerance of pure phenomena. In this they are different from the misspeakings with which they are often associated. Seeing slips of the ear as simply the auditory complement of slips of the tongue mistakes their programmatic nature and function. Misspeakings are the disorderings of sense by nonsense; mishearings are the wrenchings of nonsense into sense.^[14]

Examples

In songs

The top three mondegreens submitted regularly to mondegreen expert Jon Carroll are:^[1]

1. "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear^[3] (from the line in the hymn "Keep Thou My Way" by Fanny Crosby, "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear")^[15] Carroll and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross I'd bear".
2. There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise")
3. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Both Creedence's John Fogerty and Hendrix eventually acknowledged these mishearings by deliberately singing the "mondegreen" versions of their songs in concert.^[16][17][18]

Rap and hip-hop lyrics may be particularly susceptible to being misheard because they are often improvised and frequently lack an official, written version. This issue gained publicity in 2010 over multiple errors claimed in lyrics printed in the Anthology of Rap, printed by Yale University Press.^[19]

"Blinded by the Light," a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song by the Manfred Mann's Earth Band (for which they rewrote the lyric in the chorus), contains what has been called "probably the most misheard lyric of all-time":^[20] "revved up like a deuce" is frequently misheard as "wrapped up like a douche". The comedy show The Vacant Lot built an entire skit, called "Blinded by the Light", around four friends arguing about the lyrics.^[21]

In the lyrics to the opening theme to the FOX animated television series Family Guy, after the cast sings "Lucky there's a man who, positively can do, all the things to make us..." it was widely thought that Stewie Griffin sang "effin' cry" (or "f'in cry"). However, in an interview, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane stated that Stewie actually sings "laugh and cry." The theme to later seasons (starting with The Kiss Seen Around the World.^[22]) was re-recorded and the actual line is heard more clearly. The mondegreen was referenced by Peter Griffin in the episode Friends of Peter G. when he utters to Stewie in a drunken slur, "laugh and cry, effin' cry, what's the difference?"

The Bernie Taupin/Elton John song Bennie and the Jets contains the line "She's got electric boots, a mohair suit" which is often misheard as "She's got electric boobs, and mohair shoes".^[23] A scene in the film 27 Dresses shows that this is but one of many mondegreens that listeners have invented for this song.^[24]

A number of misheard lyrics have been recorded, turning a mondegreen into a real title. They include:

• The song "Sea Lion Woman", recorded in 1939 by Christine and Katherine Shipp, was performed by Nina Simone under the title "See Line Woman" and later by Feist as "Sealion". According to the liner notes from the compilation "A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings," the actual title of this playground song might also be "See [the] Lyin' Woman" or "C-Line Woman."^[25]
• Jack Lawrence's misinterpretation of the French phrase "pauvre Jean" ("poor John") as the identically pronounced "pauvres gens" ("poor people") led to the translation of La goualante du pauvre Jean ("The Ballad of Poor John") as The Poor People of Paris, which in no way hindered it from becoming a major hit in 1956.^[26]

Non-English-language

Ghil'ad Zuckermann cites the Hebrew example mukhrakhím liyót saméakh (‘we must be happy’, with a grammar mistake) instead of (the high-register) úru akhím belév saméakh (‘wake up, brothers, with a happy heart’), from the well-known song Háva Nagíla (Let’s be Happy)."^[27]

A collection of items submitted by Hindi speakers (and relating mainly to songs in Bollywood movies) is available online.^[28]

In literature

• "A Monk Swimming" by author Malachy McCourt is so titled because of a childhood mishearing of a phrase from the Catholic rosary prayer, Hail Mary. 'Amongst women' became 'a monk swimming'.^[29]
• The title of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye comes from the main character, Holden Caulfield, mishearing a sung version of the Robert Burns poem Coming Through the Rye: the line "Gin a body meet a body / comin' through the rye" is understood as "Gin a body catch a body / comin' through the rye."
• The title and plot of the short sci-fi story, "Come You Nigh: Kay Shuns" ("Com-mu-ni-ca-tions") by Lawrence A. Perkins in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine (April 1970) deals with securing radio communications by encoding them with mondegreens.

In television

• Mondegreens have been used as a story element in advertising campaigns, including:
  • A commercial for the 2012 Volkswagen Passat touting the car's audio system shows a number of people singing incorrect versions of the line "Burning out his fuse up here alone" from the Elton John/Bernie Taupin song "Rocket Man", until a woman listening to the song in a Passat realizes the correct words.^[30]
  • A series of advertisements for Maxell audio cassette tapes, produced by Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury^[31], shown in 1989 and 1990, featured misheard versions of Israelites by Desmond Dekker and Into The Valley by The Skids as heard by users of other brands of tape.
• "Mondegreens" is the name of a segment on the Australian music quiz show Spicks and Specks (ABC TV).^[32]
• The Two Ronnies comedy skit "Four Candles" is entirely built around mondegreens, including a customer request for "fork handles" being misheard as "four candles".^[33]

Other examples

Amongst schoolchildren in the U.S., daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance has long been rife with the potential for mondegreens, both intentional and unintentional.^[1][34]

Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1875 cited a line from Fyodor Glinka's song "Troika" (1825) колокольчик, дар Валдая (‘the bell, gift of Valday’) claiming that it is usually understood as колокольчик, дарвалдая (‘the bell darvaldaying’ - the onomatopoetic verb for ringing).^[35]

Reverse mondegreen

There are compositions which appear nonsensical but which can be interpreted homophonically as a rational text.

A prominent example is Mairzy Doats, a 1943 novelty song by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston.^[36] The lyrics are a mondegreen and it's up to the listener to figure out what they mean.

The refrain of the song repeats nonsensical sounding lines:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe

The clue to the meaning is contained in the bridge:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,

Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."

The listener can figure out that the last line of the refrain is "A kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?", but this line is sung only as a mondegreen.

Other examples include:

• Iron Butterfly's 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", a reverse mondegreen of the phrase "In the Garden of Eden," which was going to be the song's title, according to liner notes. (An episode of The Simpsons called Bart Sells His Soul has Bart Simpson handing out the song's lyrics as a hymn titled In the Garden of Eden.)
• Sly and the Family Stone's 1970 hit "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" is pronounced "Thank You For Lettin' Me Be Myself Again".
• A plot line in the 1945 comedy-mystery film Murder, He Says, which involves a nonsense ditty repeated by a character, which is a reverse mondegreen that contains a clue to finding some lost money.

Deliberate mondegreen

Luis van Rooten produced a volume of pseudo-French poetry, Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames (sounds like "Mother Goose Rhymes"), complete with critical, historical and interpretive apparatus, which are actually elaborate, extended mondegreens for English-language nursery rhymes. This can also be considered soramimi, which produces different meanings when interpreted in another language.

Some performers and writers have used deliberate mondegreens to create double entendres, including:

• The lyric "if you see Kay" (F-U-C-K) was employed by blues pianist Memphis Slim in 1963, R. Stevie Moore in 1977, April Wine on its 1982 album Power Play, the Poster Children via their 'Junior Citizen' in 1995, and Turbonegro in 2005, as well as a line from James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses.^[37] Britney Spears did the same thing with the song "If U Seek Amy", as did The Script in their 2008 song "If You See Kay" and Aerosmith in "Devil's Got a New Disguise."
• The liner notes in the album Ænima by the metal band Tool feature the phrase see you auntie (C-U-N-T).^[38]
• The score of Atonement (2007) contains a track called "Cee, You and Tea," referring both to the main character of Cecelia, played by Keira Knightley, and also the word "cunt," the use of which factors significantly into the plot.
• A similar effect was created in Hindi in the 2011 Bollywood movie Delhi Belly in the song Bhaag D.K. Bose. While 'D.K. Bose' appears to be a person's name, it is sung repeatedly in the chorus to form the deliberate mondegreen 'bhosadi ke' (Hindi: भोसडी के), a Hindi expletive.
• "Mondegreen" is a song by Yeasayer on their 2010 album, Odd Blood. The lyrics are intentionally obscure (for instance, "Everybody sugar in my bed" and "Perhaps the pollen in the air turns us into a stapler") and spoken hastily to encourage the mondegreen effect.^[39]
• During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain joked about the Beach Boys song, Barbara Ann, singing it with the lyrics "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran".^[40]

See also

References

Notes

Further reading

• Edwards, Gavin. Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, 1995. ISBN 0-671-50128-3
• Edwards, Gavin. When a Man Loves a Walnut, 1997. ISBN 0-684-84567-9
• Edwards, Gavin. He's Got the Whole World in His Pants, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82509-0
• Edwards, Gavin. Deck The Halls With Buddy Holly, 1998. ISBN 0-06-095293-8
• Gwynne, Fred. Chocolate Moose for Dinner, 1988. ISBN 0-671-66741-6
• Norman, Philip. Your walrus hurt the one you love: malapropisms, mispronunciations, and linguistic cock-ups, 1988. ISBN 9780333473375

External links

• Misheard lyrics to Christmas songs are immortalized as 'mondegreens' (from Snopes.com)
• "Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh" - columns by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll
• Man-bol lists numerous Hindi mondegreens, mainly from Bollywood movie songs
• The Archive of Funny Misheard Music Lyrics
• Am I Right - Misheard Song Lyrics, Latest Additions