Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Boo's mondegreen

Skibo has a Christmas concert coming up (it's a church-run preschool, so they call it that rather than a holiday celebration....) and so his class is busily preparing their songs. He's even got a CD to listen to so that he can practice.
Unfortunately, the songs are either dreadful, or worse, lovely songs cut down to half-a-verse-and-no-part-of-a-chorus. Think "We three kings" terminating in "afar", with no mention of fields, fountains, moors or mountains. And absolutely no stars of wonder.
His favourite song to sing is "Go tell it on the mountain" (full chorus, no verses): and Boo loves the song as a consequence. She sings along heartily (and truth be told, rather more musically: those extra 21 months really make a difference!) but with one small "improvement" to the lyrics.

She sings the Sarah Palin version. "Go kill it on the mountain".

Yours, still laughing,
N.

2 comments:

awareness said...

that is funny! I have grown to love Christmas concerts...when my foray first began when Martha was little, they were downright awful because they bent over backwards in political correctness and eliminated any whiff of virgin marys or star of wonders. overboard! Then a principal showed up with musical talent and turned it back to a Christmas concert....with CAROLS and seasonal songs and choirs and everything. What fun!

Keith said...

You sound like a great mom, N.

My Google alert for "mondegreen" brought me here. I learned the term in late 2007. One thing led to another, and now I’m the administrator of a flaky effort called Mandy Green Project largely aimed at helping make "mondegreen" a household word. It involves a quirky novel written by MANDY GREEN (yep, a mondegreen of "mondegreen") whose story centers on a mondegreen ("Gesundheit Whistle" misheard as GAZOON HIGH TWIZZLE). Please check it out and tell all your friends named MANDY GREEN.

My son Emmett told me the whole effort is hopeless, adding that he hated to be the BEAR OF BAD NEWS.

The next day Emmett mentioned that he always thought that CIRQUE DU SOLEIL was CIRCUS L.A.

I'm a native of Vermont, and this is my favorite mondegreen (from the Beach Boys' "Kokomo"):

To Martinique, that Monserrat mystique

misheard as

Vermont’s unique, Vermont’s a rotten state