OUR report of a relative who, as a child, thought the classic version of the Lord’s Prayer began “Our father, a chart in heaven, Harold be thy name” stated that this type of mistake is known as an eggcorn. A number of readers have suggested that instances like this in which a whole phrase rather than just a word is misheard, should be called mondegreens rather than eggcorns.
Ralph Hancock has supplied us with the garbled ballad from which the term derives, which you can also find in the Wikipedia entry for mondegreen: “Ye Highlands and ye…
