Joy of English

And one that has puzzled me since I was a child and the song "The Purple People Eater" was popular. The puzzling recurring line was "one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater."

So was it something that had one eye and one horn and ate flying purple people?

Or did it have one eye and ate one-horned flying purple people?

Or was it something with one eye, one horn, flew, was purple and ate regular people?

Or ... 

Seriously, I used to wonder about this. It's no surprise I wound up a professor of Queer Studies.

Apparently I was not the only one, as you can see by reading this Wikipedia article.