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This week: Lady Mondegreen is Dead Edited by: Arakun the twisted raccoon  
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Quote for the week: God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.
~Garrison Keillor
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Hello!
I am Arakun the twisted raccoon and I am your guest editor for this week's Comedy Newsletter. I love to play with words, so I am devoting this newsletter to one of my favorite types of wordplay, the mondegreen. A mondegreen is born when someone mishears the words of a song, poem, or other phrase.The term was coined by author Sylvia Wright in 1954. As a child, she heard the first stanza of a Scottish ballad called "The Bonny Earl of Murray" as:
"Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,
O where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen."
She thought of the ballad as the tragic story of the execution of two lovers. Years later, she found out that Lady Mondegreen was a figment of her imagination. The actual words are:
"They hae slain the Earl of Murray,
And laid him on the green."
A mondegreen is different from a parody, in which the words of an entire song or poem are deliberately altered in a humorous way. The funniest mondegreens happen naturally. Like Sylvia Wright, listeners may not realize their version is incorrect for several years.
The list of potential mondegreens is limited only by the poor hearing of listeners and the mangled pronunciation of readers and performers. Here are a few items commonly mondegreened:
The "Pledge of Allegiance" to the US flag. Most of us learn the pledge when we are four or five years old, yet it is filled with long words that most young children do not understand. Listen to any child recite the pledge and you are likely to hear phrases such as:
"I led the pigeons to the flag"
"to the republic where Richard stands"
"one Nathan underground"
"with liberty, injustice for all"
Any song by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I love CCR, but I couldn't begin to understand John Fogarty's garbled lyrics until I looked them up on the internet. I found out I wasn't alone, because whole websites are devoted to mondegreens of CCR songs. Here are a few examples:
There's a bathroom on the right. (There's a bad moon on the rise)
Old Mark Twain on a river boat gone to Kalamazoo (Poor boy twangs the rhythm out on his Kalamazoo)
"Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann. So many people hear the phrase "revved up like a Deuce" as "wrapped up like a douche" that several comedy routines have been built around characters arguing about the lyrics and meaning of this song.
Hymns, prayers, and psalms: The archaic language in some of these items leads to some interesting mondegreens:
Gladly, the cross-eyed bear (Gladly the cross I'd bear)
Surely good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life (Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life)
Our Father who art in Heaven, Howard be they name. (hallowed be thy name).
Over the years, my own family has provided some great examples of mondegreens:
My son heard the title line of Brooks and Dunn's song "My Maria" as "I'm a Wheel."
One line of Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans" says "We stood beside our cotton bales and didn't say a thing." My daughter heard "cotton bales" as "cottontails." I liked her version better than the true lyrics. It always gave me a mental picture of soldiers accompanied by cute little attack rabbits.
As a child, I sang the chorus of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" as "oh come let us ignore him." I also concluded that angels fly higher than airplanes. After all, another Christmas carol says: "Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o'er the planes (plains)."
Although Lady Mondegreen has passed on, she is reborn every time a little child recites an original version of "The Pledge of Allegiance" or prays to a god named Howard. 
Something to try: Write a story that includes a character who mangles the words of songs or poems.
Thank you for reading!
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Comedy: August 29, 2012 Issue [#5227]
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