Duckle, Duckle, Daisy Lyrics
Martha has made a Christmas cake out of olive oil and gluten-flake and set it in the sink to bake. The poet thinks she must be crazy. Six lines of kitchen nonsense with a made-up refrain.
Duckle, Duckle, Daisy
Duckle, duckle, daisy,
Martha must be crazy,
She went and made a Christmas cake
Of olive oil and gluten-flake,
And set it in the sink to bake,
Duckle, duckle, daisy.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/duckle-duckle-daisy/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Leroy F. Jackson
- Tune
- Quick and teasing, like a playground chant, with the nonsense line at both ends
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does Duckle, Duckle, Daisy Mean?
The joke is that Martha gets every part of baking wrong. A cake is made of flour, butter or sugar and eggs, not olive oil and gluten-flake. Gluten is the stretchy part of wheat flour, and a flake of it is not something you would pour into a cake. Worst of all, she sets the cake "in the sink to bake", when a cake needs an oven. A child who has helped in a kitchen can spot all three mistakes.
The opening and closing line, Duckle, duckle, daisy, has no meaning. It is a nonsense chant that sounds like a playground rhyme. It rhymes with crazy in the second line, and cake, flake and bake rhyme in a run of three, which makes the middle easy to learn by ear.
It is a good first poem for a child who likes being the one who knows better than the grown-up in the story.
History and Origin
Leroy F. Jackson (1881 to 1958) wrote The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes, published by Rand McNally in 1918. He spells the word as rimes on the book's opening page, an old simplified spelling.
The book's opening poem tells that a character called Peter Patter whispered the rhymes to him among the bushes. Most are short comic verses like this one, with a made-up name or a made-up word.
Learning Activities
- Find the mistakes: read the poem and ask the children to list every wrong thing Martha did.
- Write the real recipe: list what a plain cake really needs, such as flour, eggs and sugar.
- Chant it: clap the beat while saying the nonsense line, and let the group join on the first and last lines.
- Sink science: talk about why a sink, a bowl and an oven each have a different job in a kitchen.