As 2025 comes to its close, Poor Brentford makes his last appearance of the year, offering a final benedictus and inviting us all to lean in, mishear boldly,
and sing in broken harmony “One Lane Zion.”
This is a true story. A confession, if you will. It’s the kind my mother used to make before coffee, after coffee, or frankly whenever the mood struck her to entertain herself and whoever else happened to be within earshot.
She’d sit at the Formica-topped, chrome-legged kitchen table, coffee cup in hand, her pinky raised just so, and say, perfectly straight-faced:
“When the Primitive Baptists sang ‘On Him I Can Depend,’ I was absolutely certain they were singing ‘On Him I candy pin.’”
Then she’d pause—just long enough to make you look up—and add:
“I always pictured the Lord wearing a peppermint-striped robe, a nice big bow, and candy pinned all over Him. It was a sweet, sweet comfort to my soul.”
That was my mother. She could turn blasphemy into blessing before breakfast.
I guess mishearing runs in the family. Maybe it all started with her. As I grew older and older, I swear on a stack of leather britches that everyone all over our little coal camp was mishearing things but making sense of them anyhow. Somehow.
When I was little, I guess I always thought everyone heard what I heard. I mean when our little congregation would launch into that grand old harvest hymn, I was sure as heck they were “Bringing in the sheep.” What else could they be bringing in? Say what? Sheaves? No way. We had sheep in the hollers of West Virginia. I had seen one or two, and I was certain that someone needed to do something with them especially when the cold Sheep’s Rain started to fall. It made perfect theological sense to me that the faithful would gather their flocks and present them to the Almighty before supper, or some hungry days, maybe even for supper.
But Lord have mercy. Wait ’til I tell you what my oldest sister swore she heard when the church sang “Oh, How I Love that Man of Galilee.” To this very day, she swears she thought they were praising Galileo. That works, too. Love is love, after all. I just hope she didn’t think that Jesus had a telescope and a strong interest in planetary motion. He didn’t, did He?
So there we were—a family of devout mishearers, certain our Creator managed sheep and celestial calculations all before breakfast.
Our unpainted cinderblock church sat in a dirt field without a sign or even a sign of grass right at the bottom of Pool Room Hill and by the time a hymn rhapsodied its way out the solitary window that someone painted-shut, it was anybody’s guess what the congregation was singing. The hymnals were worn thin, the pianist kept on keeping on with that clickety-clackety thing she did on the ivories, and half the folks sang from memory or eyesight blurred by coal dust and exhaustion.
Here’s an example as good as plenty. “I’ll Fly Away.” Poor Brentford’s dad who didn’t darken a church door in those days, swore what he heard it come up from below was loud and clear:
“I’ll Find a Way.”
Wouldn’t that make perfect sense for a coal miner like him to hear lyrics like that, especially in a coal camp where folks never expected wings anywhere except outside in the chicken coop or inside on a dinner plate. All they hoped for was a break in the company line, a way to keep supper on the table, and the roof patched till payday. Finding a way was its own kind of flight. And Lord knows he found a way.
But then came “In the Sweet By and By,” which Poor Brentford swore was “In the Sweet Buy and Buy.” He figured Heaven must have a company store too, just like the one in Ashland, only this one sold mercy by the pound and grace on credit. Maybe the angels might even mark the bill “Paid in Full,” but till then, you’d better keep your script handy.
One Sunday, right after his daddy got a payday and got back home from playing cards, he heard the choir swell into “Where Could I Go but to the Lord?” But land’s sake. What do you think reached that poor child’s ears? “Where Could I Go but to the Store?” It landed with hard conviction. In a camp where the store kept both your debts and your dinner, the line between salvation and supplies was never quite clear. He pictured the Lord behind the counter, apron dusted in flour, handing out hope with provisions and trusting somebody somewhere to settle up.
In places like that, meaning bent itself toward survival. Hymns, promises, even Heaven had to pass through the same filter as supper and credit—what will keep us going.
And then came the hymn that nearly undid him: “Holy, Holy, Holy.” No doubt Poor Brentford heard “Holey, holey, holey.” He saw it all: Heaven’s laundry line stretched across eternity, robes and socks waving in a golden breeze, each one worn clean through at the knees.
“Makes sense,” he thought. “If you’ve spent your life kneeling, you’ll come through the Pearly Gates with a few holes to show for it.”
Another time, the choir raised its voices for “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” The Cold War was heating up in his early ears and the green window shades were being pulled down every night to keep the Commies from seeing the riches inside all the rickety little houses in the coal camp, and Poor Brentford nearly dove under the pew, sure they were shouting a warning:
“There Is a Bomb in Gilead.”
He scanned the room for a coal mine to run to for safety and muttered, “Lord, if this is the rapture, it’s poorly timed.”
One song though, hit him so hard it nearly made him shut up. It was when he heard one of the church sisters in Christ singing a cappella as best she could but way off key, “Farther Along.” He heard it as “Father Alone.” For once, the mistake didn’t make him laugh. He saw in his mind a weary God sitting by Himself on a cloud, wondering why His children kept wandering off—singing the wrong words but meaning every one of them.
That was the first time mishearing didn’t feel like play. It felt like recognition.
Years later, long after the hymnal pages had crumbled and the ivories had browned, Poor Brentford decided that maybe he should go away, somewhere far away, and get the wax out of his ears and maybe get some schoolhouse so that he could understand things better. Sure enough. He did. You’d never guess what he discovered?
One day, without even looking for it, he stumbled onto a word for what they’d been doing all along. A real word.
Mondegreen.
Turns out it came from a Scottish ballad, where a poor lady was said to have “laid him on the green,” but someone heard it as “Lady Mondegreen.” Poof! Just like that, the misheard lady was granted immortality. Proof! Just like that, a wrong word, held long enough, can become its own kind of truth.
When Poor Brentford learned about that word he laughed out loud. He had been inventing Lady Mondegreens since the cradle and had gone on to fill his whole durn life with saints and shepherds who existed only in the wax between his ears.
And isn’t that just like all of us? The whole world hums along out of tune. You want more proof? Just take a gander at some pop songs:
Jimi Hendrix cried, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky,” but half of America swore he said, “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”
Elton John pleaded, “Hold me closer, tiny dancer,” but we still see him clutching Tony Danza.
Creedence Clearwater Revival warned, “There’s a bad moon on the rise,” though to many of us it will forever be, “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
Poor Brentford’s verdict on ’em all?
“These all work fine. Kissin’, bathrooms, Tony Danza—whatever gets you through the verse.”
But here’s what caught him off guard. He realized the same muscle that bends words into comfort bends meaning too. We don’t just mishear lyrics; we reinterpret life until it sings in our key.
A miner hears “I’ll Find a Way.”
A child hears “In the Sweet Buy and Buy.”
A lonely church sister hears “Father Alone.”
Maybe that’s not error at all. Maybe it’s hope doing what hope does best—repairing what’s broken. Maybe that’s the thing about mishearing: sometimes, by pure accident, you stumble into truth. Because really, what’s faith if not a lifelong attempt to make sense of what we can’t quite hear?
We catch snatches. We fill in the blanks. We call it belief.
Of one thing, though, Poor Brentford is certain. The holey Holy doesn’t wholly mind. Maybe Heaven even keeps a special choir—the Mishearing Saints—singing merrily off-script but in tune with the heart.
Even now, I reckon meaning still passes through the same old filter—what helps us hold on, what helps us make it through the night.
So listen up. As 2026 trollops its way in, go on and clean the wax out of your own durn ears.
When you do, Lord knows what you’ll hear. Maybe you’ll find out why folks have been laughin’.
Happy New Ear.
The Wired Researcher 