Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Golden sings.

Fifth day of Christmas and what do we get? 

This is not my Smudge meme, but surely we've all screwed up lyrics, by accident or on purpose or maybe both. 

I've related my soap story about "Jingle Bells" before, how Child Fred had barely any idea what a sleigh was, let alone an open sleigh or worse a one-horse sleigh, so I would sing loudly, as kids do when they're not asked to sing, "Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one horse soap and sleigh!" But I could not figure out where the soap came in. As it turns out, soap may be used in place of wax to protect runners on sleds and make them slippery, and I presume on sleighs as well, so I may have been onto something unwittingly. 

But that's a classic mondegreen. A more purposeful Christmas mis-sing was related by Dave Barry in his novel The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. The narrator, a boy dragooned into playing a Wise Man in the pageant, had a hard time not laughing when friend and fellow Wise Man Mike would sing "We three kings of Orient are / Smoking on a rubber cigar." And Mrs. Elkins would get mad.

Another I recall from a kids book, I think it was in the Mrs. Coverlet series, featured "Good King Wence's car backed out / On a piece of Stephen."  

"Jingle Bells" alone seems to bring out the lyricist in young children, who have over the years taught us with the song that Batman smells and what fun it is to ride in a beat-up Chevrolet, among other lessons.

But the accidental words often come from circumstances like my soap issue, where I just didn't understand what was being said so I applied what I did know to the sounds. 

One time in junior high I was in a chorus that was planning to attempt the "Gloria in excelsis Deo" for a concert involving multiple schools. I do not know if it was Bach's or Handel's or one of Vivaldi's or someone else's; I've listened to them and they didn't sound like ours, which was probably our fault.

As a public-school kid I'd never heard much Latin before, and being presented with a choral piece in which all the words were in Latin was a shock. To this day I can still hear the public school music teacher with the midwestern twang working through the tenor part with us:

Gloria in excelsis Deo
et in terra pax hominibus
bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te
benedicimus te
adoramus te
glorificamus te!

Fortunately for me and for the choir, fate intervened that year and I had to drop out. I don't recall why but I don't think it was my idea. In any event it saved the choir from hearing me resort to Pig Latin in desperation.

Years later I heard the "peanut butter and jelly" trick. Supposedly, if you're singing a choral arrangement and are in danger of forgetting the words, the tip says to sing "peanut butter and jelly" instead. Your words will blend in with the correct words until you find your place, and meanwhile your voice is still heard. I immediately imagined that public school choir, faced with the Gloria in Latin, hearing that tip and resorting to it en masse:

Peanut buh Ter in Jel-LEE
Peanut butter pax in jellybooss
Peanut butter jeh LEE

I decided that it actually works better on the Hallelujah Chorus:

PEAnut BUTter
PEAnut BUTter
And JELly
And JELly
And Jeh heh heh LEEEEE

Mostly these days I keep my singing to when I'm alone in the car. Safer that way.

5 comments:

  1. When I was in grade school, the kids had a similar riff on "We Three Kings" with with a "99 Bottles of Beer" countdown influence -

    We three kings of Orient are
    Tried to smoke a rubber cigar
    It was loaded and exploded
    Boom!
    We two kings of Orient are...

    Over a lot quicker than 99 Bottles, but as kids do, we had no problem restarting at the top and repeating it ad nauseum!

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  2. We had a slightly different version ..

    We three kings of Orient are
    Tried to smoke a rubber cigar
    It was loaded and exploded
    Now we are on yonder star

    In private school, I was a member of the "Schola Cantorum" which meant I was one of the kids who stood by the organist and who sang the High Mass in Latin every day at 11:00, much of it "a capella".

    Most of us were in it because we got to leave right after the priest and before the rest of the kids, so we got to be first in line at the cafeteria.

    One time, someone put a tack on another kid's bench seat. When we finished singing, and the whole place in reverent silence, the kid sat down and immediately leapt up and shouted "Oh my God ... Bless America!"

    We were all dying and got in a lot of trouble, but we could tell that the headmaster was having a hard time keeping a straight face as he chastised us.

    Our school motto was "Timor Domini Principium Sapientiae" ... Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.




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  3. My "Holy imbecile" was luckily forgotten and did not become part of family Christmas lore.

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  4. There are regional differences in the mondegreening (?) of "Jingle Bells"...some areas say that "The Batmobile lost a wheel/the Joker got away", whereas in Queens we insisted that "He blows his nose in Cheerios & eats them every day". ;>

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  5. These are all great -- I am surprised though that Queens had such a different take on it than we fellow New Yawkuhs did in Borough 5. We were definitely of the Batmobile Lost a Wheel school.

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