A mondegreen is a misheard song lyric, like ‘Excuse me while I kiss this guy’ (instead of ‘. . . kiss the sky’). The word is itself a mondegreen, stemming from a mishearing of ‘laid him on the green’ as ‘Lady Mondegreen’ in an old ballad. I wrote about mondegreens for Macmillan Dictionary back in 2014.
Recently I discovered an elaborate one of my own. In my early teens I had a rave-music phase, playing a tape compilation continually for months (and baffling my parents, who were paying for classical piano lessons). This was years before I started clubbing, but something in the music’s rebellious energy and fun samples connected with me.
One of the highlights on that tape was a cartoon rave track named ‘Trip to Trumpton’ by Urban Hype. If you don’t know the song or the source of its samples – a children’s TV series from Britain – then I invite you to play a game: Before reading further, write down what you think the line at 0.42 is. It’s repeated four times:
Don’t overthink it or create a spectrogram or anything – just go with your first hunch. It doesn’t have to make sense. My interpretation certainly didn’t. Then let me know in a comment what you heard.
When I first listened to ‘Trip to Trumpton’, I thought the chant went, You, you, bomb in the groove, cut the devil, rock. That this was gibberish was irrelevant – lyrics often are – though it may not be a coincidence that a few of the words have musical associations. Anyway, once I inferred that lyric, it stuck.
So along I earwormed, You, you, bomb in the groove, cut the devil, rock, and later in the track several more refrains of bomb in the groove. Even when the words didn’t quite seem to match what I was hearing, they were close enough, and no substitutes were obvious enough to displace them. My brain was satisfied with its semi-arbitrary selection.
Decades later, on a YouTube nostalgia binge, I realized I surely had the lyric wrong. I had no idea how wrong. A little digging soon turned up Julia Eccleshare’s obituary for Alison Prince, an artist and children’s author who wrote a stop-motion series about a group of firemen in the imaginary town of Trumpton. Having grown up with just two Irish TV channels, I had never seen it.
From the obituary:
Alison also had a problem with the firemen characters. With their uniform and near matching faces they all looked more or less the same. Her first job was to give them different identities. “I looked at the sequence over and over again and thought: Well, there’s one who looks a bit lanky. I’ll call him Dibble. Grub was the silly one who came tumbling in late, having obviously been interrupted halfway through a ham sandwich. Two were absolutely identical, so I felt they must be twins: Pugh and Pugh. Another one, who had a certain largeness of gesture, I imagined to be Irish. He became Barney McGrew.”
The bell that rings in ‘Trip to Trumpton’ turned out to be the fire station bell in Trumpton. And – you might see where this is going – what I took to be You, you, bomb in the groove, cut the devil, rock was a list of names for claymation firemen: Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub. Eureka! And a case study in the weird marvels of pattern recognition.
You, you bound in the groove, dump this Sybil rock
I like it. Interesting to see which ones you heard the same as I did, or different.
My college roommate’s favorite spiritual, and stuffed animal, is:
“Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear”
A classic! I wonder if that bear knows Shamu, the mysterious whale.
She: You you bond in a groove captain fiddle rub
Me: You you bum in the groove cut the jibble rock
(It reminded me of “ Rock, rock to the planet rock, don’t stop.”)
Thank you both for playing! I’m struck by how similar your own line is to mine, Michael: just two differences, one of them a minimal pair.
As a Briton I knew they were the names of the firemen, and I had most of them correct, but for many years I thought the first two were “Hugh, Pugh”. I was disappointed to discover it was “Pugh, Pugh”.
It’s funny how we get attached to certain ideas or connections and are thrown for a loop a bit when they’re upended. In this case too it reduced the novelty of what you had imagined.
Yes, I was very disappointed when I discovered that the Police song “Walking on the Moon” did NOT say “tomorrow’s another day: Tuesday,” which always made me smile. FWIW I heard “you, you, fun in the groove, cut the Sybil, rub.” I think those of us unfamiliar with Trumpton are primed to hear “groove” by the rave-music context.
“Tuesday” is an entirely plausible hearing of that part of the song, in terms of both meaning and sound. You’re probably right about the priming of “groove”; there also just aren’t that many words with a “groo” sound, groove being the only one I can think of with any solid musical connotations.
Ugh. Never heard the song. I’m sure that being from the other side of the pond, I’ll make a mess of it. Plus listening on my cellphone and being…y’know, “of a certain age” and having listened to too much (loud) music…(I’m making excuses)…
“You, you, bun in the groove, cut the civil rub” is the best I can do…LOL!!
Making a mess of it is intrinsic to the game! Every wild interpretation is a winner, as far as I’m concerned. Interesting that “in the/a groove” is proving so popular.
As someone who grew up with Trumpton, with enjoyed occasional nostalgic revisits, I knew exactly what the words would be as soon as I heard ‘Pu..’ in that tone of voice. I can see why everyone has the interpretations they do, and it’s interesting (and funny) to observe the mental effort it takes to ‘allow’ myself to hear those alternate hearings.
It’s good to get a reaction from someone so familiar with the names. Though I’ve never seen the show, we had similar ones in Ireland whose voices and soundbites are set indelibly in my memory. And yes – it’s fun to bend our perceptions to what other people are hearing in the list.
Initial parsing: dew dew, bottom in the groove, cup of dibble, rub
Actually got one word right. I blame the cartoon Top Cat for implanting the surname Dibble as a valid word into my brain at a young age.
Also, just wanna shout out Virtue Mondegreen, a character in the actual play podcast Sangfielle. Specifically named after the concept of mondegreens.
Some nice new analyses here. I was going to suggest that Trumpton’s Dibble may have inspired Top Cat’s policeman, but it seems Top Cat predated Trumpton by a few years. Virtue Mondegreen is an excellent name.
Do, do, butt-in-the-groove, cast a tibble rubbish.
Seeing all these variations is very reassuring. And that’s our first two-syllable ending.
Hugh, Hugh, cut in the groove. Let this bubble rock!
So close to Pugh! I’m sure a phonetician would have something useful to say about aspirated plosives here.
Was thinking as I read the comments. Back in 1998, the song “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 came out, and there were different opinions as to the lyrics in the chorus. In case anyone wants to listen, I won’t mention some of the ones I heard; even some radio DJs were scratching their heads!
I always figured the chorus of that song was just slow scat singing, like in the title. But you’ve reminded me of another vintage mondegreen, immortalized in this radio clip:
I guess there’s some extra leeway (pun intended) when the song isn’t in your native tongue . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUAaHkGpJy8
Endless leeway.
Ohhhh noooo. I ken lee widout dat.
Another data point for you. Note that I am slightly hearing impaired from childhood in that I don’t properly hear the highest frequencies in a hearing test.
Do, do, cuff in the glue, pop the diddle, rock.
Thank you for joining in. That’s the first contribution with something else in place of groove.
Here are all the offerings to date; they make for an interesting set:
You, you, bomb in the groove, cut the devil, rock
You, you bound in the groove, dump this Sybil rock
You you bond in a groove captain fiddle rub
You you bum in the groove cut the jibble rock
You, you, bun in the groove, cut the civil rub
Dew dew, bottom in the groove, cup of dibble, rub
Do, do, butt-in-the-groove, cast a tibble rubbish
Hugh, Hugh, cut in the groove. Let this bubble rock!
Do, do, cuff in the glue, pop the diddle, rock.
And the actual line again:
Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub