Byron Marshall the comic genius of Pineville, Louisiana pens a long long spritz

[Michael Eisenstadt]

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       MOIRE ON THE SURGE FOR THE HOLY FRAIL

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Responding to my exciting report, A Matter of Great
Moment (itself in response to Aram's profoundly
unsettling revelation that he can't understand
English) I've received a number of comments. Not all
of them kind. No wait, that was the one in response to
my essay that George Doubleneck Glebe was one of the
great art singers of the 18th century.

You may recall that I quoted from my Nobel Prize
winning research on the previously unrecognized fact
that Swedes cannot understand Swedish, and
communicate, to the extent they do, through a form of
telepathy.

Some objected that my portrayal of Swedes was unkind.
Others objected that my portrayal of Swedes was
insufficiently unkind. 

Wait, those were both from the same person! Bruce W.
explains that he is part Swede. But as Robert Lewis
Stevenson said on a related matter, which part?

Others reflected on things that in their own lives 
they have never understood. 

For example, Einstein wrote me a short note on the
Universe. Schoenberg on functional harmony. 

And I received a brief email from one Samuel Clemens,
who said he had never understood the weather. Him and
all the American Meterology Society, the organization
of Downtown Parking Attendants. 

He's not the only one. I was just looking at the
weather highs and lows for Spring in the region I live
in. In the sixties there was the lowest low, a chilly
mnus 22 degrees (possible typo there, unless I'm
living in Mars. Which maybe I am.) In the 30s was the
maximum high, a broiling 92 degrees. This clearly
establishes the thesis of Global Warming, or my name
isn't John Prine.

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Here are some other comments:

Micheal Emy. sent comments detailing the inability of
anyone he knows to speak clearly, thus putting him in
the same camp as Aram.  

Michael of Austin the Centre of the Blues Scene
comments on my comments concerning the confused words
in Wildwood Powder, the great Clatter Family song. 

He says the line in the song is:

<<
the pale and the leader
>>

And elucidates:

<<
I believe the original reads "the pale 
oleander"  (flowers are white, and
extremely poisonous) -- oleander=man killer in Greek.
>>

And adds,

<<
Rosewood Casket is example of turn of the century
art song which went down market into the folk.
>>


As mentioned, Bruce W. said:

<<
I ARE A SWEDE, and I am deeply
offended by your pointing out the truth about our
so-called communication system.  :-)  
>>

He later said he wasn't all THAT offended. 

He adds

<<
Swedes really aren't "into" verbal communication, as
far as I can tell. 
>>

and adds 

<<
There's SOoooo much material there!
>>

About which see the final comments from Kurt.



Kurt of Kanada (a province of Japan; it is here where
roams the famous Kanada Lagun) says:

<< 
[Do you recall the discussion of] "Secret Asian Man." 
I believe it was started by Les ... who stated that in
the Johnny River's song "Secret AGENT Man," he'd
always understood it as "Secret ASIAN Man." 
>>

It's NOT Secret Asian Man?

Then what WAS the great Patrick McGoohan referring to
when he looked at that bicycle and said, ... looks
asian to me.

Kurt has a vast recollection of songs he never heard
correctly.

<<
I used to love the BeeGees and in their hit song "To
Love Somebody" I always heard "... in my beret"  
>>

Which is hard to top.


He then makes a very important contribution on
Swedish, reflecting directly on my Noble Prize winning
research.

He says, and perhaps more correctly than he realizes, 

<<
PS  I always think of Swedish as being the European
language that is closest to Chinese.  Very
sing-songish.  It's amazing how it sounds so unlike
English, German, Norwegian or Danish ...
>>

Yes, Kurt is right. Recent ethnological research has
turned up (discoveries in a series of barrow-mounds
near Uppsula) significant evidence. Analysis has
corroborated this finding, and it is now clear that
three thousand years ago a tribe of Chinese moved into
Scandanavia and settled in the region now known as
Sweden (cognate to the Chinese word which means "chop
stick.") These people were, naturally, genetically
wired to speak Chinese. Instead, they found themselves
adopting the Scandanavian language of their
surroundings (and superiors), the Norwegians, Danes,
and Armadillos. 

This has been offered as evidence by no less than
Professor E. Beaverboard for the problems of the
Swedes in communicating, and the decay of their
version of Scandanavian to the peculiar, and useless,
dialect that it is today. And sing-songy, yes. Very
much so. Very much yes. True indeed. Odd, isn't it? It
seems odd to me. It really seems odd to the Swedes.

Conclusive proof may have been turned up in 1992 when
a Swedish child was brought up in Saigon by North
Korean parents. The child had no trouble speaking (a
dialect of Russian.) If only the child had been
brought up by Italian parents in the Bisque country of
Argentina.

Thank you, Kurt. I'll mention you in my next paper.

Just don't get me started on Finnish!


Finally,

Jeanann kindly comments,

<<
Great discussion

JA

>>

Now what language is THAT? Oh, those are Jeanann's
initials.

Thanks, Jeanann!

:-)

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Finally, from friend David B., comes the following,
what you have all been waiting for -- the story of 

               **  MONDEGREEN **

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Subject: Re: A Matter of Great Moment
To: byron@byronmarshall.com

Dave, of San Francisco, says:

<<
A) Everyone has trouble making heard words into sense.

>>

Yes, David, but some of us have trouble making sense 
out of words we can't hear.

Dave adds

<<
B) It's easier if you can see the lips of the
speaker--and therefore harder when you're hearing a
recording.
>>

Sorry, my name isn't HAL. This observation is only
true if you're a computer. And a fictional one, at
that.


Then Dave adds the following, really valuable part of
his letter:

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             VALUABLE PART OF DAVID'S LETTER
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Dave says:

<<
Let me introduce you to the word "mondegreen"--which
is what you think you hear rather than what the singer
is really singing. 

The great scholar of Mondegreens is Jon Carroll, a
marvellous columnist for the S.F. Chronicle. Some of
his work on this topic can be found at: 

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/mondegreens.shtml

I hope you'll follow links to read his other work.
We've met him and like  him. He wrote two columns
about Sara Linnie once upon a time. 
 
David
>>

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Yes!

Having taken a quick look at the site, I'll second
this, and alert everyone to this new word: 

                 Mondegreen

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      A BIRD ROUGH SNOWING:  MONDEGREEN
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I'll echo Dave.

I urge you all to go to the website. 

It's quite charming (btw, Collins attributes the word
to a writer named Sylvia Wright ... assuming he heard
her name right.) 

I leave it to you to discover the origin of mondegreen
itself. 

Or you can find it in the following, 'introduction to
Mondegreen', in the Jon Carroll column on the
mondegreen website.

:-)

Thanks Dave.

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                 MONDEGREEN 101.B
             AN INTRODUCTION TO MONDEGREEN
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Jon Carroll

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/mondegreens.shtml

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         Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh 
         ...........................

                by Jon Carroll

Here at the Center for the Humane Study of
Mondegreens, we've been toting up the entries and
applying the latest statistical correlative methods,
even using our toes, to arrive at a semi-definitive
answer. 

We believe that the most frequently submitted
Mondegreen is still "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear"
(known in the real world as that fine old hymn "Gladly
The Cross I'd Bear"). A close second is "There's a
bathroom on the right," a mishearing of "There's a bad
moon on the rise" from the old Creedence Clearwater
song "Bad Moon Rising." 

Third place is still firmly held by "Excuse me while I
kiss this guy," actually "Excuse me while I kiss the
sky" from the Jimi Hendrix song "Purple Haze." Mr.
Hendrix was himself aware that he had been
Mondegreened, and would occasionally, in performance,
actually kiss a guy after saying that line. 

Fourth place is probably occupied by Round John
Virgin, a Shakespearean figure occasionally found in
"Silent Night." Also high on the charts is a
Mondegreen from "Groovin'", a popular song of an
earlier era. (Kids, "groovin'" was kind of like
"chillin'" except the clothing fit more tightly). 

In that song, the Rascals were singing "You and me
endlessly," but many people heard "You and me and
Leslie," leading to speculation about the exact
identity of Leslie and the popularity of multiple
couplings in the music world. 

For those of you who have not yet received the
pamphlet (mailed free to anyone who buys me an
automobile), the word Mondegreen, meaning a mishearing
of a popular phrase or song lyric, was coined by the
writer Sylvia Wright. 

As a child she had heard the Scottish ballad "The
Bonny Earl of Murray" and had believed that one stanza
went like this: 

Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen. 

Poor Lady Mondegreen, thought Sylvia Wright. A tragic
heroine dying with her liege; how poetic. When it
turned out, some years later, that what they had
actually done was slay the Earl of Murray and lay him
on the green, Wright was so distraught by the sudden
disappearance of her heroine that she memorialized her
with a neologism. 

This space has been for some years the chief publicity
agent for Mondegreens. The Oxford English Dictionary
has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will. 

The pledge of allegiance is such a hotbed of
Mondegreens that one could create a composite of
submitted entries: "I pledge a lesion to the flag, of
the United State of America, and to the republic for
Richard Stans, one naked individual, with liver tea
and just this for all." 

This formulation is elderly enough to have predated
"under God," which is just as well; it would be a
shame to lose "one naked individual." 

There are Mondegreens in familiar phrases. A friend of
Adair Lara's believed for years that we live in a
"doggy dog world" populated by pushy people with a "no
holes barred" attitude, while a friend of Carolyn
Stone's believed that World War II was fought between
the Zees and the Not Zees. 

B. Young was charmed to hear that both Coke and Pepsi
came in "cheerleader size." Later, he was disappointed
to learn that it was actually "two litre size."
Florence Jarreth was interested in the new "Jeep
Parakeet," but less interested in the new "Jeep
Cherokee." 

James Lauder recounted the story of the pet shop clerk
who told him, in all seriousness, that her parents'
wealth did them no good at all because they just sat
around their backyard deck in Marin and "drank
themselves to Bolivia." 

Geoffrey Gould's mother was convinced that if, say,
you were moving a vase to a high shelf because small
children were about to come over, you were moving said
vase "out of arm's sway." Stephanie von Buchau always
believed, correctly, I should think, that "a soft
dancer turneth away wrath." 

But the overwhelming majority of Mondegreens come from
song lyrics. Remember on the East Side and the West
Side when me and Mamie O'Rourke "risked our lives in
traffic"? Remember when Simon and Garfunkel sang
hauntingly about how "partially saved was Mary and
Tom"? Remember that touching moment in "I'm in the
Mood for Love" when the singer reveals his favorite
nickname for his beloved? 

I'm in the mood for love,
Simply because you're near me,
Funny Butt, when you're near me ...


There was the Bob Dylan song with the memorable
refrain: "Dead ants are my friends, they're blowin' in
the wind." There was the great Crystal Gayle song
"Doughnuts Make Your Brown Eyes Blue." There was the
equally wonderful Maria Muldaur song "Midnight After
You're Wasted." 

Val Kruger heard Jose Feliciano's famous recording of
"Feliz Navidad" as "Police naughty dog," and now so
will you. Barry McCarthy mentioned another popular
Spanish song, "One Ton Tomato." Melissa McChesney
always heard "My baby likes the Western movies" as "My
baby's like a wet sock moving." 

Two great Paul McCartney Mondegreens: The lines of
French in "Michelle" were heard by Kathy Stawhorn's
daughter as "Michelle, ma bell, Sunday monkey won't
play piano song, play piano song." Several people have
heard the line in "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" that
goes "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" as "the girl
with colitis goes by." 

There are many more; many more -- I have envelopes
stuffed with them. But our eyes grow weary and our
stomachs grow hungry; we must now, in the words of the
old Christmas carol, "sleep in heavenly peas." 

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