A Duck and a Drake Lyrics
Find a flat stone, a calm pond and a good throwing arm. This rhyme belongs to one of the oldest children's games in the world: skimming stones across water.
A Duck and a Drake
A duck and a drake,
A nice barley-cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker;
A hop and a scotch,
Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/a-duck-and-a-drake/
- Type
- Mother Goose, Animal Rhymes
- Tune
- Chanted rhyme
- Best for ages
- 5 to 11 years
What Does A Duck and a Drake Mean?
Ducks and drakes is the game of throwing a flat stone so it bounces across the surface of water. A drake is a male duck. Each bounce counts, and the rhyme keeps score: "a hop and a scotch is another notch" adds another skip to the tally. "Slitherum, slatherum" sounds like the stone skidding over the water.
History and Origin
James Orchard Halliwell noted that stone-skimming is mentioned by writers in ancient Greece and Rome, and that an English book printed in 1585 already called it "a duck and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake". He printed this rhyme in The Nursery Rhymes of England in the 1840s, suggesting lines like it had been chanted by children at the water's edge for centuries.
Learning Activities
- Skim stones: with an adult, find flat stones at a calm lake and count the bounces.
- Best stone: talk about why flat, round stones skip better than lumpy ones.
- Duck or drake: look at pictures and learn to tell a duck from a drake.