Every thing nowadays has a name every illness, every condition has a pigeon hole, every hobby or pastime, every job and occupation and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, after all that is one of the functions of language.
Names and definitions enable us to know what someone else is talking about as well as feeding the habit of those interested in trivia.
I like trivia myself all those interesting facts about just about anything, the origins of surnames, inventors, adventurers, sporting events, who did what to who and when.
In fact my head is absolutely full of useless bits of trivia from irrelevant facts to complete rubbish I even know the origin of the word trivia.
All of which brings us neatly to the purpose of my rambling namely that all of us at one time or another have listened to a song and got it wrong and completely misheard the lyric, sometimes just the first hearing and sometimes every time you hear it.
I’m sure that everyone has a list of their own that they can recite but one that always sticks in my mind is from the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” the correct line is “spare him his life from this monstrosity” but I always hear “spare him his life from his Walls sausages”, I know it makes no sense but that’s what I hear.
I once heard Billy Connolly telling one of his tales many years ago, which happened when he was working in America, it was about a little girl in church who instead of singing “Gladly the cross I bare” sang “Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear”.
Now I’m sure that you all have far better examples than the two that I have mentioned.
All this leads me neatly to the point where I impart my little piece of boring trivia, a little gem of trivia which just happens to be the name to describe a misheard lyric, that word being ‘Mondergreen’.
The word “Mondergreen” is derived from an old folk song that was released on a record in the early 1950’s which contained the line “They laid him on the green” but this was misheard and was thus misinterpreted as “The Lady Mondergreen.”
Now wasn’t that an interesting bit of rubbish.
PS, I would be interested to hear your own examples of Mondergreens.
Comments
Dynamaso | July 15, 2008 - 03:21
There are many classic Mondegreens. In fact, there is an Australian music quiz show called 'Spicks & Specks' that has a segment called Mondegreens where it asks contestants to identify the song from the mondegreen.
Some of my favourites are:
'Alex the seal' instead of 'Our lips are sealed' - from The Gogos song of the same name
'Excuse me while I kiss this guy' instead of 'Excuse me while I kiss the sky' - from Hendrix's 'Purple Haze'
'He's got the whole world in his pants' instead of 'He's got the whole world in his hands' although I must admit the idea of a man having a world in his pants appeals to my twisted sense of humour.
Luly Whisper | February 18, 2010 - 11:29
My father used to teach music in the Isle of Man many years ago. He used to tell a story of how one class were practising the Manx national anthem (words by W H Gill): "O land of our birth,/O gem of God's earth,/ O island so strong and so fair", and one boy sang the third line as "Oh I am so strong and so fair." That may have been deliberate, of course.
Biggus | February 18, 2010 - 12:24
Thanks Luly,
My mum was from Sunderland and whenever any lives were lost at sea the congregation would always sing the "sailors hymn" "for those in peril on the sea"
apparently on one occasion after a local merchant ship was sunk by a german U-boat there was a memorial service and my eldest sister, only 3 at the time was heard to sing "for Rose and Beryl on the sea"