Mondegreen No. 1 & 2

A Mondegreen is the mis-hearing of a lyric resulting in the meaning being rendered in a more comic fashion.

The phrase was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in 1954, writing in Harper’s Magazine. As a child she had listened to her mother recite the old Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray. Part of which deals with the bloody end of the titular noble – particularly the aftermath of the slaying, at which point they, “Laid him on the green.”

La Wright, however, heard that not only was the Earl o’ Moray dead, but so too was “Lady Mondegreen.”

And so the Mondegreen was born.

My pal Sandra was, for a long time, under the common misapprehension that Jimi Hendrix had come out as bisexual in his song Purple Haze. The evidence? The line:

“’Scuse me while I kiss this guy”

Very polite, these bisexuals. ‘Scuse me. You’re excused I’m sure, don't mind me.

My mother is as adroit a mondegreener as she is a malapropist.

The scene: Top of the Pops, some time in the Autumn of 1983. Boy George croons on a Mississippi Riverboat (actually a stretch of river somewhere near Weybridge in Surrey).

My mother laughs and tuts, and says:

“He’s a comedian, right enough.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what he’s singing: I’m a I’m a I’m a I’m a I’m a comedian…”