Shamoo The Mysterious Whale

Hello ScoFans!

Last week, I gave a math lesson which I'm sure all of you thoroughly enjoyed (at least you pretended to, which is almost as important as actually enjoying it), well this week it's a whole nother type of lesson.

Okay, so by show of hands how many of you are familiar with the term "mondegreen"

Okay, now put your hands down because I can't see you anyway and I'm sure you look ridiculous sitting at your computer at your home or place of business with your hand raised like that. I mean really, how embarrassing for you.

For those of you who have not heard the word before, a mondegreen is a misheard lyric often resulting in much embarrassment (almost as much as raising ones hand because the words on the screen told them to) as someone belts out the wrong words drunk in front of their friends, only to be corrected by a friend or loved one.

And for anyone who is interested in the history of the word, I'm going to steal from Wikipedia (where would I be without it?)

The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term mondegreen in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," which was published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954. In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the final line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O' Murray." She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl Amurray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". As Wright explained the need for a new term, "The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original".

Like the Fibonacci sequence, I also love a good mondegreen. There are a number of websites devoted to them on the Internet, most of which leave me laughing and wondering "What the hell did they think the rest of the lyrics were, if that's what they thought that line was?"

Which brings me to today's post. With the knowledge now of what a mondegreen is, can you guess which lyric has been misheard for the title of this post?

Yes, it's U2's "Mysterious Ways".

So now, ScoFans and people who have wandered here looking for "gays suck me dry" (you know who you are, I read it in my keyword analysis), I give you "Mysterious Ways", rewritten to suit the line "Shamoo, the Mysterious Whale"

Shamoo take a swim with your sister Naroon
Let her love in, and let it in soon
You've been living blind you see
Ignoring her plea
She's been longing to swim
To where you can't be
Land

You're happy
She's feeling down
She's thinking of running aground

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Shamoo, the mysterious whale

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Shamoo, the mysterious whale

Shamoo take a swim with your daughter again
Let her talk of things that have bought her pain
She needs you to hear
To hear is to heal
If you want her to survive
Better learn how to feel
(Learn to feel boy)

So just stay
By her side
And see the pain inside of your child

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Shamoo the mysterious whale

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Shamoo the mysterious whale

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Open your heart, light up her life

One day you will look.... back
And what will you see... then?
Will you hold her... now?
Either do that... or
You could just stand... there
She needs you at this moment
To show what you're feeling

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Shamoo the mysterious whale

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Shamoo the mysterious whale

Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Hear her cries
Naroon's having difficult days
Needing love from the mysterious whale
She longs for it
She longs for it
Open your heart, light up her life