Editing Mondegreen (section)

==Etymology==
In a 1954 essay in ''[[Harper's Magazine]]'', Sylvia Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the [[ballad]] "[[The Bonnie Earl o' Moray]]" (from [[Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)|Thomas Percy]]'s 1765 book ''[[Reliques of Ancient English Poetry]]''). She wrote:

{{blockquote|
When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from [[Reliques of Ancient English Poetry|Percy's ''Reliques'']], and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

{{Poem quote|
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And ''Lady Mondegreen''.<ref name="Wright" />}}
}}

The correct lines are, "They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / And ''laid him on the green''."  Wright explained the need for a new term:

{{Blockquote|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.<ref name="Wright" />}}