moon_custafer | This Week in Mondegreens

Just looked up the lyrics to The Grateful Dead’s ‘Brokedown Palace,’ and the line I’d always heard as “hang myself for bail” turned out to be “make myself a bed,” which certainly fits better with the rest of the song; but then I tried googling the phrases “hang myself/himself/oneself for bail,” because I thought it had to be a real expression, akin to “cheating the hangman,” but no such expression came up.

Apparently when I first misheard the phrase, I also assigned it a meaning. I suppose if I ever do have occasion to use it, I can claim to have coined a phrase.