I thought I’d share some Memorial Day appropriate fun with you today and get serious tomorrow. I’ve written about palindromes (no relation to Sarah) and I’m sure I will again, but today I have three patriotic mondegreens courtesy of Jon Carroll.

In a nutshell, a mondegreen is a mishearing of song lyrics—as you might guess, kids are a great source of them.

The term was coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954 when she wrote about a song she heard as “Ye highlands and ye lowlands/Oh where hae you been/They hae slay the Earl of Murray/And Lady Mondegreen,” only to learn years later that it was actually, “They hae slay the Earl of Murray/And laid him on the green.”

So here are three to help launch your Memorial Day celebration.

I love this first one, it could be the start of a new oath for people who take jobs on Wall Street.“I led the pigeons to the flag” (for “I pledge allegiance…)

Next, is a possible opening line for a song about Congress, “Oh, beautiful, for spaceship guys,” only it might be more accurate if it was ‘oh, beautiul, for spacy guys…’

This final offering has to be the product of a hungry five-year-old, “America, America, God is Chef Boyardee.”

For more mondegreens be sure to use the link above.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxeteer/4302530479/

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 1:10 am and is filed under Quotable Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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