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Cock-A-Doodle Doo
All Instruments: Douglas Milne, Lead Vocals: Helen Raw
From the TwinkleTrax album "Vol. 2: Nursery Rhyme Time - 20 Super Cool Nursery Rhymes And Children's Songs"
Download this mp3 here:
My dame has lost her shoe;
My master's lost his fiddling-stick,
And doesn't know what to do.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
What is my dame to do?
Till master finds his fiddling-stick
She'll dance without her shoe.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame has lost her shoe,
But master's found his fiddling-stick,
Sing doodle doodle doo!
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame will dance with you,
While master fiddles his fiddling-stick,
For dame and doodle doo.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame has lost her shoe;
Gone to bed and scratched her head,
And can't tell what to do.
This nursery rhyme has a gruesome origin in a story told in a 1606 pamphlet entitled "The Most Cruell And Bloody Murder committed by an Innkeepers Wife, called Annis Dell, and her Sonne George Dell, Foure yeeres since"
The pamphlet recounts how a girl of around four years old, Besse James, witnessed the murder of her three year old brother, Anthony, at Bishop's Hatfield in Hertfordshire. To stop her talking the murderer cut her tongue out.
Some three years later, she found herself in the care of a foster mother in Bishop's Hatfield. The pamphlet continues:
This wench ( as before is reported ) being by the direction placed where she had reliefe; one day, some month before Christmasse last, going to play with the Goodwifes daughter where she soiourned in a Parke joyning to Hatfield (commonly called the Kings Parke ) as they were in sport together, a Cocke harde by them, fell a crowing, when the other Girle mocking the cocke with these words,
Cocka doodle dooe,
Peggy hath lost her shooe,
and called to her, Besse, canst not thou doe so? When presently the Girle in the like manner did so; which, drawing the child into amazement, she presently left her, and ran home crying out as she went, the dumbe Girle Besse can speake, the dumb Girle Besse can speake.
"Mocking the Cocke" was a game played by the children where they copied the noises made by a cockerel crowing and formed them into words and phrases. As Besse suddenly found herself able to join in with the game, it is likely that she had been struck dumb with shock following the murder rather than literally having had her tongue cut out.
Besse was immediately taken before the Justice, Sir Henry Butler, where she recounted the story of her brother's murder by Annis Dell and her son.
The earliest version of this rhyme appeared in 1765 in John Newbery's "Mother Goose's Melody: or, Sonnets for the Cradle":
Cock a doodle doo,
My Dame has lost her Shoe
My Masters lost his Fiddle Stick,
And knows not what to do.
James Orchard-Halliwell added three further verses in "The Nursery Rhymes of England" in 1842, and a fourth in a revised edition published in 1853:
Cock a doodle doo!
My dame has lost her shoe;
My master's lost his fiddling stick,
And don't know what to do.
Cock a doodle doo!
What is my dame to do ?
Till master finds his fiddling stick,
She'll dance without her shoe.
Cock a doodle doo!
My dame has lost her shoe,
And master's found his fiddling stick,
Sing doodle doodle doo!
Cock a doodle doo!
My dame will dance with you,
While master fiddles his fiddling stick,
For dame and doodle doo.
Cock a doodle doo!
Dame has lost her shoe;
Gone to bed and scratched her head,
And can't tell what to do.
Halliwell's 1846 revision of "The Nursery Rhymes of England" published:
Cock a doodle doo!
The princess lost her shoe,
Her Highness hopped,
The fiddler stopped
Not knowing what to do
In his 1853 revision, Halliwell also published a similar verse from Yorkshire:
Cock-a-doodle-do
My dad's gone to ploo;
Mummy's lost her pudding poke
And knows not what to do
Origins text ©2011 TwinkleTrax Children's Songs.