Mairzy Doats

DESCRIPTION: Nonsense rhyme based on distortions of meaningful words: "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey," equating to "mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."
AUTHOR: Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston (source: Gardner)
EARLIEST DATE: 1943 (source: Gardner)
KEYWORDS: nonsense wordplay jumprope animal food
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #330, "Mare-zlett oats" (1 fragment, heavily folk processed)
LibraryThingCampSongsThread, post 69, "Mairzy Dotes)" (1 text, from user Tess_W, posted September 1, 2021)
cf. Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 249, "In fir tar is" (1 text, ending with the line "Goat eat ivy, Mare eat oats"; this is Roud #20173)
Roud #30614
RECORDINGS:
The Merry Macs, "Mairzy Dotes" (Decca 18588, 1944)
NOTES [194 words]: According to the Wikipedia article on this song, "Milton Drake, one of the writers, said the song had been based on an English nursery rhyme. According to this story, Drake's four-year-old daughter came home singing, 'Cowzy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters.' (Cows eat wheat and sows eat wheat and little sharks eat oysters.)" I don't recall ever seeing this verse, but the Opies note a certain similarity to a different older rhyme, cited above as "In fir tar is," and Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes has a different by-blow or source. Clearly this had a very complicated history!
I frankly would not have indexed this based on just the tiny item in Abrahams, but it has a Roud number, so I'm creating this entry to link in items Steve Roud doesn't include, such as the LibraryThing citation that affirms it had some traditional vogue.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 471, estimates that this was the tenth most popular song in America in 1944, peaking at #1 in January 1915 (#1 for the year being Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne's "I'll Walk Alone"). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: AJRV330

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography