Today the Chicks are bubbling over with holiday joy as we bring you the marvelous Catriona McPherson, whose newest addition to her hilarious Last Ditch Motel mystery series, HOP SCOT, released on December 5. Take it away, Catriona, and thanks so much for visiting with the Chicks!
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
In HOP SCOT (Last Ditch Motel mystery No.6) Lexy Campbell and the crew leave California to spend Christmas in Scotland. So, for a change, it’s not Lexy laughing at American customs and culture, it’s the rest of them chuckling at the strange ways of my home country, not least the food.
Usually chuckling, sometimes gagging, because my ancestral foodstuffs offer a lot of scope for comedy and repulsion combined. For instance, when Lexy’s mum wants to serve a hearty lunch on the day of their arrival, she plumps for Scotch Broth and, as Lexy says “That’s a lot of mutton fat and barley for a Californian”.
To cap the scene, I stole a genuine example of “Kids say the darndest things” from my niece Amy, with her permission. When she was wee she called this soup “Crotch Broth” which was a bit too apt for its greyish, glutinous consistency, tbh.
While I was in touch with Amy getting her permission to use the joke, she let me know that the family tradition is going strong. A bit of background: the words “blackberry”, “raspberry”, “strawberry”, “cranberry” etc. only have two syllables in British English, not three – “blackbry”, “raspbry”, “strawbry”, “cranbry” which is why my toddler great-niece, clutching a box of blueberries at the supermarket check-out, announced “I love boobies!” in ringing tones to the entire store.
That’s not ideal, but sometimes things make more sense when wee kids say them wrong. “Away in a Manger” is a weird lyric, isn’t it? He’s not away anywhere, He’s right there in the manger beside his mammy. There’s no such puzzle in Scotland, where the name for a child or a baby is “wean” – a mooshing together of the word for small and the word for one. At every carol concert throughout childhood, little piping Scottish voices sing “A wean in a manger”, which is much more accurate and descriptive, I think you’ll agree.
Sometimes the darndest-thingification can add extra drama. I know that I always sang “Good King Wencles last looked out, on the feast of Stephen”. His very last look! He only just spied that poor man gathering winter fyooo-OOO-ellll by the skin of his teeth!
Other times, the things I thought I was singing made no sense at all and took a bit of imagination to work into a coherent scene. In “Silent Night”, I had an extra cast-member along with the angels, shepherds, Holy Family, kings and farm animals: “All is calm, all is bright”, I would croon, then start the list, “Round John Virgin, Mother and Child, Holy Infant . . .” It didn’t bother me that I never heard about Round John Virgin in any other carols. There’s only one about a donkey, isn’t there? Only one about those three ships. And angels only sing “Hark the Herald” in one, as far as I ever knew.
There’s definitely only one carol about that little drummer boy, which brings me back to Amy again, in her Crotch Broth years. One Christmas when she was tiny, my sister sang “The Little Drummer Boy” to her as a lullaby. She was pretty tired after a hard day being adorable, but as she listened to the lyrics, she struggled awake, sat up, fixed my sister with a hard stare Paddington would have been proud of and demanded, “Why you go ‘pum-pum-pum’, Mummy?” Why indeed? I reckon, when old people scoff at “Sound a da Police” or “Boom Shak-A-Lak” we haven’t got a leg to stand on.
Merry Christmas, if that’s your bag, and a Happy New Year, if that’s your bag. Enjoy the rest of the winter, unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, and best wishes to all.
Cx
Readers: Have you got your own invented lyrics for any Christmas carols? Or family sayings that came out of the mouths of babes? I’d love to hear them.
Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes preposterous 1930s private detective stories, realistic 1940s amateur sleuth stories, and contemporary psychological standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comedies about the Last Ditch Motel in a “fictional” college town in Northern California. HOP SCOT is number six in the series. Catriona’s books have won or been shortlisted for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Lefty, the Macavity, the Mary Higgins Clark award and the UK Ellery Queen Dagger. She is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.
Chicks on the Case 
My brother and I used to sing as kids “Jingle Bells, Santa Smells, Rudolph Ran Away” I don’t remember the rest of the lyrics. That memory just brought a smile to my face, of such simpler times.
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I remember the same lyrics, except it was “Rudolph lost the sleigh…”
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Ha- I’ve just remembered “We Three Kings of Leicester Square, selling knickers tuppence a pair. Quite fantastic, no elastic (not very safe to wear)!”
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I like that. A British version of silly lyrics.
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Oh Catriona! You always make me laugh. Most of the lyrics I misheard as a kid can’t be posted on a family-friendly blog. LOL
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Well, that’s why God gave us DMs, right?
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What a fun post! I’d always heard “round yon virgin” but imagined a very round pregnant Mary. Maybe it really means a-round the virgin. To this day I have no idea. I have a lot of misheard lyrics that aren’t of the carol variety. “There’s a bathroom on the right.” (There’s a bad moon on the rise) “you bring salad and I’ll bring soup.” (You bring sally and I’ll bring Sue.) Our favorite Christmas Carol thanks to my grandson who filled in the lyrics with his own style several years ago when he was two, is “Jingum bells, jingum bells… fwaaaaaaaaaaa.”
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Brilliant as always, Catriona! This calls to mind “It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown.” One of the storylines involves Sally preparing for the Christmas play. She’s supposed to say “Hark,” and then a kid named Harold Angel is supposed to speak next. She’s confused because she doesn’t know who Harold Angel is.
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Exactly! I’ve never seen Charlie Brown’s Christmas oeuvre – maybe this year?
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Definitely a classic! Think it was a half-hour TV special–with room for ads. Or maybe it’s an hour with a lot more ad time included.
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I never understood the “round yon virgin” either, Libby, and I’ve let it go on much too long to figure it out now. I’d just make it awkward.
When our kids were little, my husband taught them new lyrics to a Raffi song: Who’s got a beard that’s long and white? Satan’s got a beard that’s long and white. Who comes along on a winter night? Satan comes along on a winter’s night … etc etc. They still sing it.
When my nephew was young, even though he’s not Scottish, he had the habit of taking out the middle of words. Perhaps he was always in a hurry, perhaps the words were just annoyingly long, but imagine his grandmother’s surprise and dismay when he yelled, “FIRETRUCK,” but yanno, not that.
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Oh yeah – you know “When Santa got stuck up the chimney”? One of my nephew’s couldn’t cope at all with the “What tough luck” lyric.
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Awwww, lovely. Listen, if you’re into misheard lyrics you want to listen to this guy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7my5baoCVv8
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“Just let me staple the vicar” – HA!
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Ahhhhh – that’s British English for you: Round = Around.
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LOL! This is not a Christmas song, although it does have the word “Angel in the title.” There was a sappy song years ago called “Angel of the Morning.” There was a line in the song where I swear the woman was singing “Just catch my dream.” But my friend did me one better. She thought the lyric was “Just brush my teeth!” I looked it up. The real lyric is “Just touch my cheek.”
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The Beatles’ “The girl with colitis goes by”, anyone?
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Such a hilarious post, Catriona! One of the lyrics I changed in my head is in “Winter Wonderland,” where:
Gone away is the bluebird/
Here to stay is *the Yule* bird
Because, clearly, that makes more sense.
One of my kids also keeps a list of “Out of Context Sayings” from our family. My contribution was: “Can’t you help me? You have, like, four hands.”
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That makes a ton more sense, Jen!
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It’s not a carol–far from it, actually–but my favorite mondegreen (a term coined by American writer Sylvia Wright in 1954 after mishearing the line “layd him on the green” from an English poem as “Lady Mondegreen”) is one my sister heard as a child in the “Star Spangled Banner”: “Oh say can you see, by the donzerly light…”
“I always imagined a ‘donzerly light’ to be some sort of amazingly beautiful kind of illumination,” she says, “and I was so disappointed when I learned the truth about the lyric.”
Thank you so much for visiting the Chicks today, Catriona, and I am SO excited to read HOP SCOT!
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Ho ho hooooooooooo these are hilarious, Catriona!!
No invented carols of my own to share, but I did have a wonderful daily calendar of misheard lyrics called Kiss This Guy (a reference to Hendrix’s Kiss the Sky, natch.) Too many favorites to name, but I always enjoyed “We built this city on sausage rolls.”
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Wait, it’s not sausage rolls? Bummer. I used to hear “walk this way” as “born to sway.”
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Love it!
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My brothers always changed Walking in a Winter Wonderland to Walking
’round in women’s underwear.
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Catriona, your post is a hoot! Thanks for visiting Chicks today and brightening all of our days. This isn’t a mis-hearing, exactly, but my 3 yo grandson informed us, when meeting a new family friend named Carol, “I will call her Christmas Carol.”
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Vickie: Not a Christmas Carol. But a hymn we sang in my church growing up was “There is a balm in Gilead,” which I sang as “bomb.” I wasn’t sure why God wanted to bomb people in Gilead, but I figured he had his reasons! Thanks for hanging out today with the Chicks. Merry Christmas, Catriona!!
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