What Does the Donkey Bray About? Lyrics
A child asks Nurse what the animals mean by their noises: the donkey's bray, the pig's grunt, the goose's hiss and the calls of four birds. Three of the birds seem to say words. Christina Rossetti put it in a book of rhymes for the nursery, published in 1872.
What Does the Donkey Bray About?
What does the donkey bray about?
What does the pig grunt through his snout?
What does the goose mean by a hiss?
Oh, Nurse, if you can tell me this,
I'll give you such a kiss.
The cockatoo calls "cockatoo,"
The magpie chatters "how d'ye do?"
The jackdaw bids me "go away,"
Cuckoo cries "cuckoo" half the day:
What do the others say?
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/what-does-the-donkey-bray-about/
- Type
- Poems for Children, Animal Rhymes
- Written by
- Christina Rossetti
- Tune
- Quick and curious, with a rising question at the end of each of the first three lines
- Best for ages
- 2 to 7 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| What does the donkey bray about? | Put your hands up as long ears and say hee-haw. |
| What does the pig grunt through his snout? | Wrinkle your nose and grunt softly. |
| What does the goose mean by a hiss? | Make a long, soft ssss with a finger on the lips. |
What Does What Does the Donkey Bray About? Mean?
The poem is a list of questions. The child wants to know why the donkey brays (the loud hee-haw), why the pig grunts through its snout and why the goose hisses. If Nurse can explain, the child promises "such a kiss", a warm thank-you to the person who looks after the child. Nurse is the old word for a child's carer, someone who looks after the nursery.
Then the child answers a few questions in the next lines. Some birds seem to speak in words. The cockatoo calls its own name, "cockatoo". The magpie chatters "how d'ye do?", which is an old way of saying "how do you do?". The jackdaw, a small crow, seems to say "go away". The cuckoo cries "cuckoo", its name, for half the day. The poem ends with the same sort of question it began with: "What do the others say?"
It is a sound poem, in which every animal's sound is heard as a message. Several lines rhyme in pairs and triplets when read aloud: about and snout, hiss, this and kiss, and away, day and say.
History and Origin
Christina Rossetti (1830 to 1894) published Sing-Song in 1872, a book of short verses for the nursery. Many of its poems, like this one, are built from sounds that read well aloud.
The poem has ten lines and no verse break. The 1893 reprint used for this page spells "d'ye" with an apostrophe in the middle, as the old greeting was written.
Learning Activities
- Animal sound chorus: assign each child one animal and cue them one by one as the poem names it.
- Answer the questions: ask what each animal might be saying, and let the children make up answers.
- Talking birds: listen to recordings of a magpie, a jackdaw and a cuckoo and decide which one sounds most like words.
- Say hello: practise 'how do you do?' with a handshake, as the magpie does.