I Kissed This Guy and Lady Mondegreen

I Kissed This Guy and Lady Mondegreen

Come ride a train of thought with me for a while; this journey has a serendipitous end.

I don’t check my referral logs as often as I think most webbers do; the only statistic that truly interests me is the number one search referral for any given month. Last month it was cat shit, and this month it’s excuse me while I kiss this guy. Up until recently, it was hardly even on the radar, but as I write this, I hold the top spot on the Google search page for that particular phrase—with or without quotation marks.

I cannot explain this sudden interest in misheard Jimi Hendrix lyrics, nor can I explain why I rank so high for such a search. Not only do I not mention Jimi Hendrix or his song “Purple Haze” at all in the page to which Google links, but the content on that page is really mostly about an alien and an alien sky. I just don’t get it. Surely, that’s not what people are hoping to find.

So I decided to do a little research of my own, and I somehow stumbled onto this, a wonderful collection of even more misheard lyrics and verses—including “Round John Virgin” of “Silent Night” and the ever patriotic “I pledge a lesion to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for Richard Stans, one naked individual, with liver tea and just this for all…”

I couldn’t believe it. Emily Litella and I are not alone, and there’s actually a name for the little flubs we make: mondegreen!

Granted, mondegreen hasn’t yet been accepted into the dictionary, but it seems like every sesquipedalian already views the word as legitimate. How could they not? The etymology behind it is a lot more interesting than that behind most other words.

Well… interesting to me, anyway.

When the following words:
They hae slay the Earl of Murray
And laid him on the green

…somehow end up as:
They hae slay the Earl of Murray
And Lady Mondegreen

…then that’s a person after my very own heart, indeed.

So, long live Lady Mondegreen!
[Excuse me while I kiss her, too.]

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