The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009

Mondegreens
Say that again!

Oh my darling, oh my darling,

Oh my darling, lemon pie!

You are lost and gone forever

Dreadful sorry, lemon pie.

Gee, what a sad song! Poor person, to lose their lemon pie. Could someone get me a hankie?

Hang on a minute. What kind of person sings such a sad song about losing their darling lemon pie? Well, nobody, actually. This is just how some people hear the words of the song “Oh My Darling, Clementine.” Sometimes, especially when everyone sings together, the words aren’t very clear, and “Clementine” can sound a bit like lemon pie. Say it aloud for yourself a few times, and you’ll see what I mean.

This is something called a mondegreen. It’s what happens when we hear words without reading them and our brains have to work out what we think is being said or, more often, sung. The writer Sylvia Wright invented the word in 1954 from something she misheard as a child in a poem her mother used to recite:

“They have slain the Earl of Murray,

And they laid him on the green.”

which she heard as:

“They have slain the Earl of Murray,

And the Lady Mondegreen.”

Poor Lady Mondegreen!

Mondegreens happen because of all the homophones and oronyms in English, which are words and groups of words that sound similar but are spelled differently and mean different things. Mondegreens are mistakes, but they’re fun and interesting mistakes. They show us how we listen—first for sounds, then words, then meaning. And they can also reveal things about the mind of the person who does the mishearing . . .

There are lots of mondegreens out there. Do you know the book Olive the Other Reindeer by Vivian Walsh and J.otto Seibold? The title comes from a mondegreen in the Christmas carol “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” where “all of the other reindeer” has been misheard by children for years as Olive, the other reindeer.Now Olive is famous!

Probably the funniest mondegreens are from pop songs, like there’s a bathroom on the right for “there’s a bad moon on the rise,” or baking carrot biscuitsfor “taking care of business.” Sometimes people don’t realize for years (or ever) that the words could be anything else . . .

I bet you can think of some words in songs or poems or prayers that you used to sing but found out later weren’t the original lyrics. In the meantime, see if you can work out what the mondegreens on the next page are.

Mondegreens

1. José, can you sing?

2. Sleep in heavenly peas

3. The ants are my friends, they’re blowing in the wind

4. Knock, knock, knocking on Kevin’s door