"Cock a Doodle Doo" ( Roud 17770) is an English

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. Fr ...

Lyrics

The most common modern version is:

Cock a doodle doo! My dame has lost her shoe, My master's lost his fiddling stick And knows not what to do.I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 128.

Origins

The first two lines were used to mock the cockerel's (

rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...

in US) "

crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly, a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not linked scientifically to any certain trait but is rathe ...

". The first full version recorded was in ''Mother Goose's Melody'', published in London around 1765. By the mid-nineteenth century, when it was collected by

James Orchard Halliwell James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (born James Orchard Halliwell; 21 June 1820 – 3 January 1889) was an English writer, Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and a collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Life The son of Thomas Hal ...

, it was very popular and three additional verses, perhaps more recent in origin, had been added:

Cock a doodle doo! What is my dame to do? Till master's found his fiddling stick, She'll dance without her shoe. Cock a doodle doo! My dame has found her shoe, And master's found his fiddling stick, Sing cock a doodle do! Cock a doodle doo! My dame will dance with you, While master fiddles his fiddling stick, And knows not what to do.

Notes

{{authority control English nursery rhymes Songs with unknown songwriters Year of song unknown English folk songs English children's songs Traditional children's songs