At Christmas time, we sing of Round John Virgin

I heard a DJ talking about mondegreens the other day. He didn't pronounce the word correctly (it's MOND-a-green, not Mondgreen) but it's one of those things that we all know and don't always know, like the term for the little holes where the shoelaces go (grommets) or the punching bag thing at the top of your throat (uvula).

A lot of mondegreens are in the lyrics of songs. Here's the perfect example: Jimi Hendrix did not sing, "Excuse me while I kiss this guy" when he sang, "Excuse me while I kiss the sky," but so many people think the first. Bob Dylan sang, "the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind." He didn't say, "the ants are my friend" any more than The Turtles sang, "You and me and Leslie, grooving" on a Sunday afternoon.

Excuse me.

But when we mishear or misunderstand words or a series of words, and instead believe we heard something else, that's a Mondegreen, and has been since 1954, when a writer named Sylvia Wright wrote in "Harper's" magazine that she really misunderstood something she heard as a child.


Her mom (Sylvia's mother!) would read to her from a book called "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry", a dusty old volume from 1765, and young Sylvia thought she was reading, "Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands / Oh, where hae ye been? / They hae slain the Earl Amurray, / And Lady Mondegreen.”

But it was all in the way she heard it. In the poem, one person and only one died. The actual line is "They hae slain the Earl Amurray, and laid him on the green."

Poor Earl. It was bad enough that he died, but now a simple misunderstanding made it worse.  And then in The Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" becomes "the girl with colitis goes by."

"There's a bad moon on the rise" in Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising sounds like "There's a bathroom on the right" for millions of people.

Even disco songs were not immune: "Take your pants down, and make it happen" is the mondegreen for "Take your passion and make it happen" as Irene Cara sang in "Flashdance."

Pity the doctor who tells a patient they will need a bone marrow transplant, only to have them think he/she said, "You need a bow and arrow transplant."

And then there are the ones that double back on themselves.  The English make a fine meal called Welsh Rarebit. It's a delightful combination of cheddar cheese, Worcestershire Sauce, Dijon mustard and beer served on rye bread that was originally called Welsh Rabbit. Somewhere along the line, possibly in response to people who felt shortchanged because there was no rabbit on their plate, they switched to calling it Rarebit.

And who among us has not seen someone on Facebook describe someone's overreaction as an "ovary action"?