Ever heard of a 'Mondegreen'?

I hadn't, until I came across the word this week while surfing the Web. Wikipedia defines it thus:

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.

. . .

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O' Moray". She wrote:

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

        Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
        Oh, where hae ye been?
        They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,
        And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green." Wright explained the need for a new term:

The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.

There's more at the link.

I found it particularly interesting because I know the ballad in question very well. I'm accustomed to hearing it as a song rather than a poem, with my favorite rendition being by Old Blind Dogs on their 1999 album 'Live' - one of their very best, IMHO.  I'm afraid I haven't been able to find that on YouTube, so here's a version of the ballad by The Corries.

'Lady Mondegreen', indeed!





Peter