An Irishwoman's Diary

LONG before there was an app for everything there was a word for everything. And your word for today is mondegreen. It’s a misheard lyric, slogan or prayer which causes great mirth/ embarrassment when shared with others.

I remember listening to Graceland on the radio for the first time and being mildly shocked on hearing Paul Simon singing “the way she brushed her hair and farted”. It wasn’t until, ahem, last year, that I discovered he was singing “the way she brushed her hair from her forehead”. I have to admit I was very surprised, and even slightly disappointed, at this turn of events. The other version still sounds better.

But of course we all know the Amy Winehouse song You Know I’m No Good contains the lyrics “. . . upstairs in bed with my eggs boiled”. I believe she was making some twisted reference to her fertility. No, you say? She was actually “upstairs in bed with my ex-boy”? I don’t believe it.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who spent two decades believing Leonard Cohen was telling Janis Joplin in Chelsea Hotel that she preferred “pants on men but for me you would make an exception”. The scales fell from my eyes when I heard him singing the song in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and realised she preferred “handsome men”. Unfortunately the song has now lost all meaning for me. If there are no pants involved, I don’t want to hear about it.

And when Alanis Morissette was spitting venom on You Oughta Know, how many people thought she was complaining about a dodgy Christmas present? “It’s not fair to deny me of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me,” she fumed. Actually she didn’t. Reader, I can now reveal there was no bear, cross-eyed or otherwise. She was actually singing: “It’s not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me.” Many people think Creedence Clearwater Revival were kindly informing us that there was a bathroom on the right when in fact they were warning of a bad moon on the rise. The name of the song kind of gives that one away.

Hands up anyone who thought Chaka Khan was encouraging people to climb every woman? She had nothing of sort in mind and was merely declaring “I’m every woman”.

The mondegreen was invented by American writer Sylvia Wright who misheard the words of a poem The Bonny Earl O’Moray as a child. She heard “they hae slain the Earl O’ Moray, and Lady Mondegreen” and felt very sorry for this dead noble woman until she discovered that she never existed and the poem actually read “they hae slain the Earl O’Moray, and laid him on the green”. To celebrate her discovery, she wrote an essay “The Death of Lady Mondegreen” in Harper’s magazine in 1954 and the concept was born.

There are some fine examples of mondegreens to be found in literature.

The famous line from the Hail Mary prayer: “Blessed art thou amongst women” has been misheard by many generations of children as “Blessed art thou a monk swimming”. That mondegreen has helpfully lent itself to two book titles – Malachy McCourt’s memoir A Monk Swimming and Miriam Dunne’s Blessed Art Thou a Monk Swimming.

Perhaps one of the most famous mondegreens is contained in the Jimi Hendrix song Purple Haze. “Scuse me while I kiss this guy” is heard by many people when the lyrics read “Scuse me while I kiss the sky”. And according to some, Hendrix deliberately played on the confusion and often incorporated the mondegreen into his performance, even seeking out a man to kiss after singing the line.

The Hendrix mondegreen inspired the online archive kissthisguy.comwhich has received more than 113,000 submissions. The site's award for funniest mondegreen goes to the person who thought Robert Palmer was singing "might as well face it, you're a dick with a glove" in some sort of a bizarre musical face-off with Michael Jackson. He was of course saying "you're addicted to love" but that doesn't sound as good.

Another subscriber thought Toto were singing “I left my brains down in Africa” when in fact they were blessing the rains down in Africa.

But if you are looking for the world-renowned expert on mondegreens, you will find him in the San Francisco Chronicle where columnist Jon Carroll has spent many enjoyable years accumulating mondegreens. Several people told him about their belief that Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds had a line “the girl with colitis goes by” when it’s a girl with kaleidoscope eyes who’s going by.

Another contributor told him that Fats Domino’s line from Blueberry Hill was definitely “Though we’re apart, you butter me still,” instead of “you’re part of me still”. But isn’t butter better? A reader believed Van Morrison had invented a new dance step involving one man and several wives, when he sang “May I have just one Mormon dance with you, my love?” The Belfast man was talking about one more moon dance and I don’t believe he playfully inserts the mondegreen into his live performances. But, ladies at the front, be prepared, just in case.