Sing, Sing, What Shall I Sing? Lyrics
A cat has made off with the string from the pudding, and chewed it in two. It is a tiny piece of kitchen chaos, and children enjoy asking what happened next.
Sing, Sing, What Shall I Sing?
Sing, sing, what shall I sing?
Cat's run away with the pudding-string!
Do, do, what shall I do?
The cat has bitten it quite in two.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/sing-sing/
- Type
- Mother Goose, Animal Rhymes
- Tune
- Spoken rhyme
- Best for ages
- 2 to 6 years
What Does Sing, Sing, What Shall I Sing? Mean?
Old-fashioned puddings were often boiled in a cloth tied up with string. The cat has run away with that pudding-string and bitten it in two, so the cook cannot tie the pudding. The rhyme asks "what shall I do?" and leaves the answer to the listener.
History and Origin
This short rhyme is printed in The Real Mother Goose (1916). Boiled puddings, like Christmas pudding, were wrapped in a floured cloth and tied with string before going into the pot, so every child at the time would have known exactly what a pudding-string was and why losing it mattered.
Learning Activities
- What happens next? ask your child to invent a fourth line: does the cat get caught?
- String game: tie a ribbon round a soft toy "pudding" and let a toy cat run off with it.
- Sing it back: take turns asking "What shall I sing?" and answering with a silly line.