Mondegreen, Goombahs & More
Learned something yesterday at youtube from a video on misinterpreted lyrics. There’s actually a term for it — mondegreen. It was coined by American writer Sylvia Wright in 1954, citing that as a girl, when her mom read to her from Thomas Percy’s Reliques, she had misheard the lyric “layd him on the green” from the Scottish ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray, thinking it was “Lady Mondegreen.” Love it! A graduate of Bryn Mawr, Wright was an editor at Harpers Bazaar. She wrote articles for magazines. One of her titles was Get Away From Me With Those Christmas Gifts. Her lone novel is A Shark Infested Rice Pudding. She edited and prepared for publication Islandia, a Utopian novel about an imaginary country written by her father, Austin Tappen Wright, a professor of law. It has been a steady seller. Published in 1942, it was reissued as late as 2006. Wright was taken by cancer at 64 in 1981. (From a NY Times obit, edited by yours truly)
Here’s a mondegreen from Dion’s The Wanderer, written by fellow Bronx-born goombah Ernie Maresca: “With my two fists of iron,” which sounded to me as “…two fists devine.” It peaked at #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1961. Maresca wrote three other big tunes for Dion. Lovers Who Wander hit #3 in ’62. Donna the Prima Donna peaked at #6 in ’63. Runaround Sue went to #1 in ’61. Maresca had his own hit, Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out), which reached #6 in ’61. He passed away at 76 in 2015. Dion is still with us, 81. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a pic of the two artists together. Here’s Ernie back in the day:
And Dion DiMucci:
Sad sign of the times, a headline from yesterday at newsmax.com: “20 Percent Who Bought Guns in 2020 Were First-Time Buyers.”
Fauci, reputation in tatters, is pulling a Cuomo, publishing a book. Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward, 80 pages, will drop in November. (Learned from an article at foxnews.com by David Rutz)
The cynic in me views the sudden focus on the Tulsa massacre of 1921 as a ploy to distract from the black on black violence and BLM rioting of 2021.
As I approached my car in late morning I noticed a bag of books someone had left on the hood. It contained three in Hebrew, a Word Search publication and a huge chemistry text. The latter two sold. As I began setting up the display, a woman gave me an Ann Rice novel in hardcover. Later, the Library Volunteers delivered four thick volumes on Albert Einstein — in Russian. A young woman bought two novels by Ayn Rand: We the Living and Atlas Shrugged. A gentleman purchased a large tome on the medical field. Ira beamed as he walked away with The Very Rich: A History of Wealth by Joseph J. Thorndike Jr.. And Gonzo, wearing his Vietnam era dog tags, took home a bunch of kids book for a friend’s daughter. My thanks to all those kind folks.
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