The Nearly Perfect Necromancy of Lady Mondegreen

A Practical Guide to Malaprop Magic
A Fiddler’s Green Leaflet by Clint Marsh & Alexis Berger
24 pages, with a full-color cover and five black-and-white illustrations

Use Your Delusion

Although the tragic love between Lady Mondegreen and the Earl Amurray existed nowhere in the pages of history or literature, it couldn’t have been more real in the mind of the young girl who dreamed the lovers into being after mishearing a verse of classic poetry. She let her imagination fill in the blanks to create a new reality, inhabiting it heart and soul.

Similar misunderstandings lie at the root of much of childhood’s imaginative play. As we age and grow in knowledge and supposed wisdom, it’s easy to shrug off such erroneous first impressions. But what if, instead of correcting ourselves, we found a way to turn our malapropisms into something wonderful and wholly our own?

In The Nearly Perfect Necromancy of Lady Mondegreen, author Clint Marsh plumbs the promise of malaprop magic, showing us how we might breathe new life into art, romance, and other creative endeavors. This practical and humorous essay features whimsical illustrations by Alexis Berger.

Clint Marsh uses elements of myth, magic, folklore, and humor to help ­people navigate everyday life. He is the ­editor of Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine and a winner of the Bookseller/Diagram Prize.

Alexis Berger is an illustrator, painter, and Murano glass artist. Her work is inspired by the Belle Epoch period and forms found in the natural world, and often incorporates themes from folklore and myth.

Originally published in Fiddler’s Green 5