MM: The Ants Are My Friends (Reader Comments and Addenda)

(10 January 1999)

Joe Robins provides a pointer to another archive of misheard lyrics that I hadn't previously known about. It includes entertaining stories about how the submitters found out they were wrong.

I forgot to mention some other items I misheard for years:

Where the wild mountain Ty rose around the blue wind Heather...

Really: Where the wild mountain thyme grows around the blooming heather...

("Wild Mountain Thyme" as performed by the Clancy Brothers)

Where the white man does as he pleases, as he walks to the guillotine.

Really: Where the white man does as he pleases, as he wants to, as he pleases.

Nanci Griffith, "Deadwood, South Dakota"

Ana Ng and I argue and all, but...

Really: Ana Ng and I are getting old, but...

They Might Be Giants, "Ana Ng"

Craig Kasper checks in with an intentional Mondegreen:

Blue moon
Used all my stand-in's cologne
Now he's not reading my part
Now he's got one of his own.

I guess it's more a parody or filk than a Mondegreen, but it's close enough to the original to be Mondegreenish, and I thought it was entertaining enough to mention.

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