It's Mondegreen Time At The OK Corral!

One of the few reasons to read the San Francisco Chronicle was the immensely amusing columnist that they must have hired by mistake. The rest of them were pompous asses, but Jon Carroll was damned clever and funny, and he introduced me to Mondegreens!

But the real origin is an American writer in the 1950s...Sylvia Wright (Yeah; I never heard of her either).

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

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen."

The actual words of the ballad are:

Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands,
O where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl of Moray,
And hae laid him on the green

And really...it almost has to be from a song. As tempting as it is to torture lines from novels or poems, the only reason we call them Mondegreens is because Wright's mom was reading the poem. So at the very least they should be confined to spoken or sung lines.

Here are a few of my favorites, and the original lines should be obvious.

"The girl with colitis goes by"

"I'll be with you darling now; I'll be with you till my skis have dried off.""

And Open Thread....but only after you provide at least one good Mondegreen.

posted by CBD at 07:35 PM

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