“Oh beautiful for spaceship skies” (“America the Beautiful” mondegreen)
“Oh beautiful for spaceship skies” is a mondegreen of “Oh beautiful for spacious skies,” the opening line in the patriotic hymn “America the Beautiful.” The misheard lyric has been cited in print since at least 1953.
Wikipedia: America the Beautiful
”America the Beautiful” is a patriotic American song. Its lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey.
Wikipedia: Mondegreen
A mondegreen /ˈmɒndɪɡriːn/ is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Thomas Percy’s 1765 book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, she had misheard the lyric “layd him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen” in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray”.
Newspapers.com
22 June 1953, Detroit (MI) Free Press, “In Radio Character” by Bettelou Peterson, pg. 41, col. 6:
Modern Youth Note
KATE SMITH is the recipient of a fan letter from a worried mother. Said the writer: “I wish you would sing ‘America the Beautiful,’ because I am worried about the patriotism of my three-year-old son. I heard him singing the song this morning, and he was saying, ’ Oh, beautiful for space-ship skies’.”
Newspapers.com
18 December 1958, Eastern Montana Clarion (Ryegate, MT), pg. 3, col. 6:
After teaching her second graders “America the Beautiful,” the teacher listened while they sang it for her. And one voice rang out above the rest: “O’ beautiful for spaceship skies.”!—Batseville (Ark.) Guard.
Google Books
Audiovisual Methods in Teaching
By Edgar Dale
New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
1969
Pg. 60:
Children may sing, “Oh, beautiful for spaceship skies.”
Newspapers.com
14 June 1991, Charlotte (NC) Observer, “Family Circus” comic strip by Bil Keane, pg. 4E, col. 1:
(A young girl is shown singing.—ed.)
“Oh Beautiful for spaceship skies…”
Google Groups: alt.humor
Higher Source 1
Keith E. Sullivan
Apr 22, 1997, 3:00:00 AM
(...)
ANDROMEDA THE BEAUTIFUL
Oh, beautiful for spaceship skies
There’s nothing left to gain
For purple shrouded casualties
On this here astral plane
(CHORUS)
ANDROMEDA, ANDROMEDA
WE KNOW IT’S A LONG HAUL.
OUR WAY WE’LL SPEED PAST GANYMEDE
WITH PHENOBARBITOL.
Oh, Nike shod Beneath our bods
So lest you think we blew it
The pudding cups, we lapped them up
While chanting once “Just Do It”
(CHORUS)
I think the fare to go up there
Is just a bit too high.
It’s not five bucks. The thing that sucks
Is that you first must die.
(CHORUS)
Google Books
Mondegreens:
A Book of Mishearings
By J. A. Wines
London, UK: Michael O’Mara Books Limited
2012
Pg. ?:
ORIGINAL LINE:
‘O beautiful, for spacious skies’
MONDEGREEN: ‘
Oh beautiful, for spaceship skies’
Twitter
Heather Scott
@spacewordnerd
So happy to celebrate America and my spaceship skies 🚀🇺🇸. Thanks for the fun cartoon
@DottedLines
4:15 PM · Jul 3, 2020·Twitter for iPhone