According to Wikipedia, “a mondegreen is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone in such a way that it acquires a new meaning.” Most often, this is a result of listening to music and not catching all the exact lyrics. We all probably have songs where there’s a section in which we don’t clearly understand every word, and so we just assume it’s this or that. When we’re wrong but start giving new meaning to the lyrics because of our misunderstanding, that’s a mondegreen.

The word “mondegreen” is itself a mondegreen. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined it in an essay “The Death of Lady Mondegreen”, which was published in Harper’s Magazine in November 1954. She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy’s Reliques. One of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray, [sic]
And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is “And laid him on the green”, from the anonymous 17th century ballad “The Bonnie Earl O’ Murray“. Wright gives other examples of what she says, “I shall hereafter call mondegreens,” such as:

  • Surely/Shirley, Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life (”Surely goodness and mercy…” from Psalm 23)
  • The wild, strange battle cry “Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward.” (”Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward,” from “The Charge of the Light Brigade“)

You can get more examples, variations, and history of mondegreens at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen.

And all this because I wanted to see if the ELO song “Don’t Bring Me Down” actually used the word “Bruce.” :-D

Very interesting. And now you know…. (And hopefully you’re now humming the song!)