Cock a doodle doo

"Cock a doodle doo"
Nursery rhyme
Published 1765
Songwriter(s) Unknown

"Cock a doodle doo" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 17770.

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]

In Oliver Stone's 1992 film JFK, the John Candy character uses this expression during his conversation with Kevin Costner's character.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 128.
  2. ↑ L. J. Budd and E. H. Cady, On Melville: The Best from American Literature (Duke University Press, 1988) p. 116.
  3. ↑ M. Banham, The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 808.
  4. ↑ Cock-a-Doodle Deux-Deux, IMDB, retrieved 11 April 2009.
  5. ↑ Cock-a-Doodle-Do Sex and the City: Season 3, Episode 18: Cock-a-Doodle-Do, IMDB, retrieved 11 April 2009.
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