Blah, blah, blah: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

So what on God's green earth could these two songs have to do with each other? One is nothing but blah-blah-blahs pasted together with the "moon-June-Saskatoon" cliches of bad love songs (and no. . . it doesn't actually have Saskatoon in it. Which makes me think of Peter Lorre in the Spike Jones version of My Old Flame: "No. . . it couldn't have been Moe. . .").

I love the Blah-Blah song, which was written by George and Ira Gershwin for a movie called Delicious in 1931.  But I am also irritated by it, mainly because nobody knows how to sing it. I've suffered through several YouTube performances, all of them awful except one (and I posted it already - I'll have to look it up). Almost everyone "blah-blahs" as if they don't remember the words. They roll their eyes and wring their hands and rack their brains and look as if they want to run offstage with embarrassment. But the joke is - and maybe people were cleverer in 1931 - THE WORDS DON'T MATTER. Nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to them. Furthermore, most love songs have crappy words anyway, so crappy they're interchangeable. There's a blueprint that most songwriters stick to, and it's tried and true, and banal and dull, and it works. 

OK then, whoof. How did I get from this blah-blah-blah thing to Leonard Cohen?

I think I am the last person on the planet who does NOT like Hallelujah. I just don't. The tune isn't. . . too. . .bad, but the lyric is a stinker. But that shouldn't be a problem, and do you know whyyy?

No one has ever noticed it.

No one has ever noticed this lyric ("it goes like this"), and I say this because people are constantly wanting to have it sung at weddings, or at confirmation services, or at baptisms. Why? Because it has the word "hallelujah" in it, probably sixteen or eighteen or twenty times.

It's not a dirty song or anything, but it's just all wrong: a typical angsty, brooding, narcissistic, self-involved, dark, vaguely profane, masturbatory Cohen thing. I'm not sure I want to hear that anywhere, let alone in church.

I read somewhere on a web site - Mormon or something - that the choir was asked by the minister to sing Hallelujah at a service. Everyone was on-board and very enthusiastic about it, because they all loved the song. They didn't have time to go over it at choir practice, but hey - they all knew the tune anyway! And they loved that chorus: Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, etc. Surely with a refrain like that, it must be a truly holy song.

Instead, it was more like: HOLY SHIT! The choir director, just as she was passing out the sheet music before the service, happened to just glance at the words, and the lines "you saw her bathing on the roof. . .she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair. . . "

Actually, that IS pretty scriptural. Bathsheba liked to take her bath in public, especially if sexually-rampant men were watching.  And anyone familiar with scripture knows what happens next. (Adultery, anyone?). And didn't somebody get a hair cut at about that time? It was David, wasn't it? Or not. And I'm not too sure he was tied to a kitchen chair.

So they sang something else. They did Praise God From Whom All, or Blessed Be The, or I Praise Thy Whatever (or whatever they do in the Mormon church). And afterwards, everyone ran up to the choir director and said, "Awwwww. Why didn't you do Hallelujah?"

What the fuck do people think this song SAYS, anyway? True, it's sort of scriptural, but it was Samson who had the haircut, not David, losing all his strength to that wily succubus, Delilah. So scriptural accuracy is compromised, sliced and diced for his own convenience, but perhaps Cohen realized no one was going to notice it anyway. No one was going to notice any part of it except the refrain, and the word that's repeated sixeen times (or eighteen, or twenty-four, depending on how long the fade is).

I've written often about mondegreens, those misheard/mistranscribed words that swarm all over internet lyric sites. Bizarrely, the SAME mondegreens seems to be replicated over and over again, on every site. I don't know how this happens, unless there is a Badly Transcribed Song Lyric Central somewhere that has all the lyrics with all the errors, all the time.

I know they're mondegreens because I listen to the original version, with the original artist, sometimes more than one version, just to be sure.  So kids, it really ISN'T "s'cuse me while I kiss this guy". 

Hallelujah doesn't qualify as a mondegreen, at all. It's not misheard. It's an ignored lyric, or a disregarded lyric, or a lyric with an erroneous assumption attached to it that it will be a Truly Holy Song because it has the word Hallelujah repeated so many times it's like machine-gun fire. So in the church I used to go to, and suffered through (especially in the choir, which was abysmal), one woman said, "I'd really like to do the Leonard Cohen song, Hallelujah," and everyone went "ohhhh!" and "yeah!" and chimed in with enthusiasm. The choir leader said he'd order the sheet music. 

I said something about the lyrics being kind of inappropriate, and, conversation-wise, the floor dropped about 37 feet. I disappeared and vaporized as surely as that supposedly-holy Leonard Cohen lyric. I no longer existed because I wasn't chiming in, and besides, I was just being "negative" like I always was, spoiling things. (This was because I didn't want a six-voice version of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, bawled off-key by people who couldn't sing a note. But the congregation thought it was simply wonderful.)

Hallelujah was never sung in my former church, for some reason, but I did see a very famous, viral video of a priest singing it at a wedding - and by the holy, all the lyrics were changed! Suddenly there was no one being tied to chairs, no haircuts, no one splashing around naked on a rooftop. It was all rendered extremely bland and weddingy. But what are the chances Leonard Cohen was ever consulted about this? And I am sure that when churches and wedding/baptism planners FINALLY get to the point of glancing at the lyrics and realize it's about an adulterous affair, they just get a pencil and start to work. "Oh, then, we can just sing our OWN version of it."

Last time I checked, that was extremely illegal. At very least, it's unethical, particularly for a church. Even some normal, ordinary songs like hymns can't be sung in church, at all, because of copyright. Not everything is in the public domain, and casually butchering a Leonard Cohen song is just not a good thing. 

I don't like this song, but I don't think it should be naively gutted just to sanitize it. Either go with the naked chick and the haircut, or forget about it.

Or maybe, instead of the David and Bathsheba thing, everyone should just go like this:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah-blah-blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah-blah-blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, do you?


ADDENDUM. As usual, there is More To The Story.

A cold and broken Hallelujah: singing priest removed from YouTube
Wednesday, April 30, 2014

By Denise O'Donoghue
Reporter

The singing priest is no more - his video has disappeared from YouTube. Fr Ray Kelly’s rendition of Hallelujah was pulled following a copyright claim by Sony ATV Publishing.

Sony ATV Publishing own the rights to the original Leonard Cohen song.

The video had gained over 30m views on YouTube since it was uploaded to the website earlier this month, making Fr Kelly an instant star.

Fr Kelly recently revealed he was meeting with Sony to discuss a record deal.

Although the original video has been removed, other videos of his performance are still available on YouTube.

The Oldcastle parish priest surprised newly-weds Leah and Chris O’Kane with a personalised version of the Leonard Cohen song. He received a standing ovation before returning to the pulpit to deliver the final prayer.

Fr Kelly's fame led to him appearing on the Late Late Show and he is jetting off to New York to perform a concert on May 13 at The Town Hall on 123 West 43rd Street.

(I can't decide which of the Ten Commandments he broke here: Thou Shalt Not Steal, or Thou Shalt Not Write and Perform Sappy, Maudlin Lyrics to a Song by a Well-Respected, If Overly-Commercialized Poet? Or is it. . . Thou Shalt Not Gut a Popular Song and Casually Substitute Dreck of Your Own and Thus Become World-Famous Overnight, Not That You Care Because You're A Priest and Above All That Worldly Stuff? Moses would've needed a few extra tablets for that one.)

OH GOD! More verses. As I listened to a few of the recorded versions, I kept hearing extra stuff. It's kind of dirty, too, making the song even MORE inappropriate at weddings where nobody even thinks of sex, for Christ's sake (what is the matter with you?). Some versions have these verses, some don't. Did Leonard Cohen really write these, or was it that dirty old Irish priest? You know about priests, don't you? Dirty things.

Baby, I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor (you know)
I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah...

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me, do ya?
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah...

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah...
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah...
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah

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Louie Louie: This really IS a dirty song!

You know, not every day is a good day. Some days are crap-ass, and this is one of those days. Not that anything bad has happened. It's just that nothing has happened AT ALL.

So I look around for things to post, but mostly they look around for me, because I'm always bumping into stuff. I found a great photo, from the 1940s I think, with a modern-day time traveller in it. No doubt a masterpiece of photoshopping, but I've seen that sort of thing before, even in films, and have posted on it (see Time Traveller on Blackfriars Bridge).

time-traveller-on-blackfriars-bridge.html

This, well. If you lived through this, and let's hope you didn't, there was a great to-do about "obscene" lyrics in the song (because the words were basically indecipherable). We used to say there was a "dirty" version and a "clean" version of  Louie Louie, but I doubt that because no one ever found any evidence. I think the whole thing was a sublime example of the mondegreen, or misheard lyric, which I recently posted about. It's possible to see things, hear things, and probably even taste and touch and smell things that aren't really there: thus Finding Bigfoot and all those ridiculous ghost-hunting TV shows. But for some reason, this seems to be particularly true of hearing things.

The urban myth that the FBI spent years pursuing an investigation of the song is true. They played it forwards and backwards, upside-down and sideways, and couldn't find anything obscene (though the Kingsmen still turned out to be one-hit wonders. Just a coincidence? I. . . DON'T. . . THINK. . . SO!) I was going to post all of the FBI's smudgy, blacked-out typewritten correspondence about this, but it bored the piss out of me, so I didn't. It's even more boring than all that blacked-out shit about Roswell.

BUT! Listen to this again, and at exactly 0:55, the drummer (having fumbled his drumstick) yells "FUCK!"

Well, it might be fuck, or it might be something else. But it's Thursday, the week is dragging ass, and it should be Friday, so here it is at last, proof that Louis Lou-EYE really IS an obscene song.

POST-IT-SCRIPT: In 1972 The Kingsmen were found at the bottom of the Hudson river wearing cement overshoes, right next to Jimmy Hoffa. Just a coincidence?

You decide.

POST-POST. Oh all right. This thing would be incomplete without at least SOME examples of the kind of bullshit that went on with the FBI or the CIA or whatever (because obviously, Louie Louie posed a serious threat to national security). The reproductions of these documents are so plug-ugly that I tried to find a way to dress them up a little, paste flowers on or turn them pink or something, but it just didn't work.

This one is obviously a complaint from a citizen sent to the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover got a lot of fan mail back then, which he enjoyed reading while dressed in women's clothing. (See related post: Was Herman Goering a Transvestite?): 

was-hermann-goering-a-transvestite-you-decide

Can y'all read this? It makes for some boring reading. But this was the kind of dirty-minded thinking that led to the fracas around Louie Louie. People were hearing whatever they wanted to hear, and whatever they wanted to hear was filthy, I tell you. . . filthy!

This is sort of like, kinda-like, what they thought they heard, or maybe some people thought they heard. I can only imagine the salacious delight of these FBI agents as they listened to the thing 500 times while drinking martinis, carefully deciphering those filthy, dirty lyrics which included such words as "girl" and "park" and "awaiting". 

But as usually happens (eventually), sanity prevailed. The FBI had to admit they couldn't make out a damn thing in those lyrics, that it was just one big mush-mouthed jumble.

We could have told them that, right from the beginning! But no, J. Edgar was having a slow day and needed a project. Should've gone out and bought a hat with a veil and a new pair of heels.

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Niki Hoeky: get hip to the cogitation, ASSHOLES!

Way down Louisiana

Down in Cajun land

Folks got something goin'

Goes something like

Care folk a-t-tootsie

I wants to t'tie ya puppe'tame me

Dim ya on a scoobydoo

I dig you on'a scuba-die
I oh boo-ga-foo you

You ooh boog-a-boo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

Golly, squally miss Molly

Everything's copesetic now

Loog-a-boo, look at you

What I'd like to do to you girl

You woka-b-boo-you

You oh boog-a-boo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee
Mmmmm

Niki, Niki, Niki Hoeky

Pappy's doing time in the pokey

Your sister's on a trip

Your momma got hip

Little girl you're lookin' ok

You ooh boog-a-boo you

You ooh boog-a-boo you

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

(musical interlude with humming)

You oh boo-ka-boo you

You oh boo-ka-boo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

Listen to me now
Niki, Niki, Niki Hoeky

Your pappy's doing time in the pokey

Your sister's on a trip

Your momma got hip

Little girl you're lookin' ok

You oh boog-a-boo you

You oh boog-a-foo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

I talk about you boo-la
(mm-mm-mm)
Come on I talk about you wisssh.
I talk about you boo-la
Talk about you wisssh.

NOTE. I sort of get this. And I'm sort of upset about it. It's the usual thing. When I try to find the lyrics to any popular song, then compare it to the actual (recorded) song, the internet version is always wildly wrong.

Well, no. Lamely wrong. The most unimaginitive reduction of a spicy pun into a plodding non-metaphor, because, gee, we just don't GET what he was trying to say here! It doesn't make sense, see. So this is sort of what he might of/ought to have said.

The weird thing is, these mondegreens (misheard lyrics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen) are exactly the same on every lyric site. They do not come from the original, published sheet music. They can't. Someone listens to the song and transcribes it and writes down what they think it might be. If it doesn't make sense to them, they make something up.

This dulls down the brilliance or at least the spark of the original song, irons out any irony and removes all those pesky puns.

How this-all started was with something I saw on Facebook - I barely pay attention on Facebook any more, it's like filing my nails or eating a Popsicle, just something to do. It was a post that was sort of  like "do you like new ideas? Do you love baking, walking dogs, picking your nose?" It was supposed to be a satiric take on those old ads to recruit dazzling original thinkers. A line jumped into my head, something I had not thought about since I was thirteen years old:

Get hip to the cogitation.

It came from a song, of course. From way back. But I could only remember bits of it, and not the title.

I followed it backwards by googling just that line, and got nothing at first. Then I added "your father's doing time in the pokey." Slowly it began to resolve into a recognizable song.

I found the lyrics on umpteen lyric sites, in fact, and they all said the same thing.

Niki, niki, niki, hoeky. Pappy's doing time in the pokey. Your mama died hip, your sister's on a trip.

Etc. etc., then the line:

Get hip to the CONSULTATION.

I couldn't believe it was consultation. Had I been wrong all those years? I found the original recording by P. J. Proby on YouTube, and listened for it.

NO

NO

NO

NO, the word was not, never was, never would be, no matter WHO recorded it (and a lot of people did after P. J. Proby), "consultation". Though it was hard to make out, there was no "s" sound anywhere in the word. It was repeated several times. It was "cogitation". It was, and it is.

So why  -

Every site you go on will say the same thing. Consultation. These things multiply, they divide, they seethe like gunky slimy pools of frog's eggs. Identical, WRONG tadpoles hatch out and turn into WRONG frogs who then lay the WRONG eggs.

Wrong.

All I can think of is that someone mondegreened the lyrics decades ago, then they somehow got glommed on to everyone's lyric site so that they would all be wrong in exactly the same (obnoxious, insulting, STUPID) way.

But we fixed it, I think. Not that anybody cares! The transcribed lyric for this was just so riddled with mistakes that I had to go over it line by line, playing the recording 8 or 9 times to make "corrections" to some sort of unintelligible patios, and then giving up.

I can't find anything about the provenance of this song. I can't, and I don't want to look at it any more. These could be Cajun-isms, they could, because Cajun is a language unto itself, but if it were Cajun I think I'd see more French mixed in with it. It's not unlike Acadian, the Canadian version, and at one point Cajuns and Acadians were one people. One went north, one went south, one went over the cuckoo's nest.

But I happen to know - I'd stake my very life on it - that no one has ever been hip to the CONSULTATION. That idea is now gasping its last breath while it writhes in the dust.

POST-BLOG COGITATION (NOT consultation), or at least a comparison. I tried to find an "authentic Cajun song", that is, without knocking my brains out, and thought of Doug Kershaw, who really was (is?) Cajun and had a few hits. I don't remember much about those songs, so googled the lyrics for the best-known one, looking for either French or the sort of gibberish that appeared in Niki Niki Hoeky.

Diggy Diggy La and Diggy Diggy Lo
Fell in love at the Fais Do Do
The pop was cold and the coffee chaud
For Diggy Diggy La and Diggy Diggy Lo

Diggy Diggy La and Diggy Diggy Lo
Everyone knows he was her beau
No other girl could ever show
So much love for Diggy Diggy Lo

That's the place they find romance
Where they do the Cajun dance
Steal a kiss with every chance
Show their love with every glance

Ah, yeah, no, I don't see any. The only "Cajunisms" are Fais Do Do (which is literally translated, if I remember my Grade 7 French, as "go to sleep"), "chaud" to rhyme with "do do", and "pop", the Canadian version of "soda". This might have some dim, far-gone Acadian origin, but I doubt it because there was no pop back in 1743.

Not much frazzlin' Cajun spice THERE, is there, boys and girls?

So on to that other one, the one Hank Williams did:

Well, goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go to pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou

Yeah, jambalaya and a crawfish pie and filé gumbo
'Cause tonight, I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
You pick guitar, you fill fruit jar and be gay-o
'Cause I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou

Well, Thibadaux, well, Fontaineaux, the place is buzzin'
And kinfolks come to see Yvonne by the dozen
You dress in style, you go hog wild and be gay-o
'Cause I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou

It's a little bit Cajun/Acadian. "Pole the pirogue" sounds like some Polish guy eating perogies, but then I could have my ethnicity wrong. More likely, it refers to a sort of pole barge, like a gondola. Yvonne, yeah, she's French. File gumbo, cher amio, all the other family names - and that's about it, no fancy stuff, no verbal yodelling or Golly, squally, miss Molly. So maybe Niki Hoeky is just a sort of nonsense rhyme, the sort of thing we clapped to in school, the cum-la, cum-la, cum-la feast-a that I was astonished to find on YouTube.

P. S. There are even more versions. I just found out. Burton Cummings pronounces it "condensation", whereas various Motown versions sound more like "conversation", and I've also heard "consolation". But NOBODY says "consultation".

(next day) OH WAIT! There's more.

Another contender for this mystery word is "conflagration", a supposed reference to lighting a joint. So now we've got it down to SIX choices, one of which is definitely wrong:

Cogitation
Condensation
Conversation
Consolation
Conflagration
(and, the ever-wrong) Consultation

Pick one. You might as well do it blindfolded. But when I hear it, I STILL hear "cogitation".

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FLEE! FLY! FLO!: the Fe-M@il version

Flee!

(Flee!)

Flee Fly!

(FLee Fly!)

Flee Fly Flo!

(FLee Fly Flo!)

Fista!

(Fista!)

Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista

(Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista)

Oh nononono, (not) a vista

(Oh nononono, (not) ca vista)

Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy

(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)

Yip belly wapum bapum bobo wa hipum

New Style New Style we got the new style,

Freestyle Meanwhile sister got it by a mile,

Lifestyle, girls smile, we can do it all the while.

Telephone dialing, rub-a-dub styling.

On a really cool tip, You can be a part of this trip

All you gotta do is this, I said, All you gotta do is this. 

(Ooooooooooooh!) Read my lips!

Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista

(Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista)

Oh nononono, (not) a vista

(Oh nononono, (not) ca vista)

Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy

(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)

Yip belly wapum bapum bobo wa hipum

Watch me do it, you can do it this way

North and South and East and Westway

Monday to Sunday, gotta be a funday

We don't care what anyone's gonna say

On a really cool tip, You can be a part of this trip

All you gotta do is this, I said, All you gotta do is this.

All you gotta do is this, I said, All you gotta do is this.

Flee!

(Flee!)

Flee Fly!

(FLee Fly!)

Flee Fly Flo!

(FLee Fly Flo!)

Fista!

(Fista!)

Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista

(Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista)

Oh nononono, (not) a vista

(Oh nononono, (not) ca vista)

Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy

(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)

Yip belly wapum bapum bobo wa hipum

Oooooooooooooooooooh! Re-fry this!

BLOGGER'S NOTE. It was only a matter of time until I found alternate versions of Flee Fly Flo. This is a great one, and I was all set to post a video of it as an example, when I read "subtitles" which said things like "fist my lips" and "don't fist your girl friend". As far as I can tell, fisting is a rather repugnant sexual practice which I don't associate with a wholesome, upbeat song like this one. So I didn't post it, then realized the subtitles were a hoax. Or at least I hope so. Maybe a dirty mondegreen, who knows.

Anyway! I found this other version, the original, which is pristine and has no mention of inserting bodily parts where the sun don't shine.  I like pop versions of these old things because it gives them an extended life in kids' minds. Immortality, if you will. The Clap-Clap song brought back to life my old "rubber dolly" rhyme, along with "three-six-nine, the goose drank wine," which for some reason reminds me of "down by the bay".

I also love the way the lyrics are set up, in word-sculptures, sort of like certain poems by Dylan Thomas (which I'll have to find. . . oh dear, there goes my afternoon).

Have you ever seen. . . a Mondegreen?

Have you ever seen. . . a Mondegreen?

To me that sounds like a Dr. Seuss rhyme. Or  something to eat, like a madeleine or a macaroon or a meringue.

Or a meringa? Marimba? Marembo? Now we’re getting off course.

The name of this bit of word-torture (which refers to a mishearing of a song lyric or a common phrase) originally came from a line of boring poetry, which some boring old person mis-heard:

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”.

So what, eh? But there’s more. More weird names for things you’re not spozed to say, but say anyway cuz you’re an idiot. I will let Wiki describe it because I'm too lazy to:

The unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases in speaking is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it can be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly sticks to a mispronunciation after being corrected, that can be described as mumpsimus.

Mumpsimus. Sounds like somebody from that Monty Python movie Life of Brian (i. e. Biggus Dickus), maybe with a  glandular condition.  I don’t want to believe it, but it’s in Wikipedia, so it MUST be right.

But before Wikipedia even existed, we had mondegreens: creative mis-hearings of things like hymn lines, which unintentionally led to brand new Biblical characters such as “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear” and “Round John Virgin (mother and child)”.

I once overheard my kids singing O Canada (before a pretend hockey game played with stuffed bears) with the line, “Ah, tease a man” (rather than “God keep our land”, a much less imaginitive reading).

But the best-known merengues or whatever-they-are (marimbas?) seem to come from pop music, where the lyrics are so blurred by stoned musicians that even THEY don’t know what they mean.

Wiki quotes two classics:

     There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise")

      

    'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Kissing “this guy” makes more sense than kissing "the sky", which is idiotic. But what about that line from the Beatles’ first hit, She Loves You?

“You know it’s up to you

I think it’s only fair

(blank blank blank blank blank)

Apologize to her”

When I sang this along with my gang of ten-year-old friends, we sang something that sounded like ‘Frighten her to do”. We got by with this, because no one cared what the words were anyway. Paul was so cute ‘n fluffy, and Ringo made us want to take care of him. John was scary and looked a little mean, and George was just the fourth man, but never mind, they were the other two legs that held up the table.

It was only years later that I thought to myself, “Frighten her to DO?” and had to look up the real line.

Which is!

“Pride can hurt you too.”

There’s a sort of “oh, of course” reaction when we finally hear the correct words, as in my revelation/epiphany over “that line” in Elton John’s Rocket Man. I always thought it was,

“Rocket Man, wearing out his shoes in Avalon” (or Babylon).

You will never guess in a million years where I heard the right line. It was on a video of the incomparable William Shatner (and I like William Shatner, by the way – that’s for another post), in which his diction still carried something of that Shakespearian clarity he had when he started his career with the Stratford Festival.

He lounged in a world-weary fashion, smoking a cigarette, each line drawn out for about thirty seconds, with as much histrionic emotion and wild inflection as a rollercoaster. This was one of his first self-parodies, though the audience (this was in about 1978) took it seriously and applauded his performance wildly.

So what’s the real line?

“Burning out his fuse up here alone”.

Who'd-a thunk it?

Mondegreens can become malignant, as when they mestastasize into foreign-language stuff.  I remember seeing something called Mots D’Heures: Gousses, Rames which only made sense (sort of) when you read it out loud:

1. 
   
   (In case you didn't get that the first time - and by the way, how stupid can a person BE? You mean you didn't GET it? What the hell is the - oh well. Here it is again. Read it out loud, will you?)
   
   
   
   

   

   
   
   
   
   

   Et qui rit des curés d'Oc? 

   De Meuse raines, houp! de cloques. 

   De quelles loques ce turque coin. 

   Et ne d'anes ni rennes, 

   Ecuries des curés d'Oc.

Makes me want to go put on my old recording of Inna-Gada-Da-Vi-Da.