Cock a doodle doo

"Cock a doodle doo" (Roud 17770) is a popular English language nursery rhyme.

"Cock a doodle doo"
Nursery rhyme
Published1765
Songwriter(s)Unknown

Lyrics

The most common modern version is:

Cock a doodle do!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master's lost his fiddlestick,
And knows not what to do.[1]

Origins

The first two lines were used in a murder pamphlet in England, 1606, which seems to suggest that children sang those lines, or very similar ones, to mock the cockerel's (rooster in US) "crow".[1] The first full version recorded was in Mother Goose's Melody, published in London around 1765.[1] By the mid-nineteenth century, when it was collected by James Orchard Halliwell, it was very popular and three additional verses, perhaps more recent in origin, had been added:

Cock a doodle do!
What is my dame to do?
Till master's found his fiddlingstick,
She'll dance without her shoe.

Cock a doodle do!
My dame has found her shoe,
And master's found his fiddlingstick,
Sing cock a doodle do!

Cock a doodle do!
My dame will dance with you,
While master fiddles his fiddlingstick,
And knows not what to do.[1]

Notes

  1. I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 128.
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