Cock a doodle doo

"Cock a Doodle Doo"
"Cock a Doodle Doo"
Nursery rhyme
Published	1765
Songwriter(s)	Traditional

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

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.^[1]

Origins

The first two lines were used 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 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.^[1]

(Verse four's alternative ending line: For Dame and Doodle Doo.)

Notes

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

[opie1997-1] 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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