Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man

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"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man"
Roud #6486
Written by Traditional
Published 1698
Written England
Language English
Form Nursery Rhyme
William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man , from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose
Tommy (or me), according to Denslow

"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man", "Pat-a-cake", "patty-cake" or "pattycake" is one of the oldest and most widely known surviving English nursery rhymes. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6486.

Contents

[edit] Lyrics

Common modern versions include:

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark it with B,
Put it in the oven for baby and me.[1]

[edit] Origins

The earliest recorded version of the rhyme appears in Thomas D'Urfey's play The Campaigners from 1698, where a nurse says to her charges:

...and pat a cake Bakers man, so I will master as I can, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and throw't into the Oven.

The next appearance is in Mother Goose's Melody, (c. 1765), when it appears in the form:

Patty Cake, Patty Cake,
Baker's Man;
That I will Master,
As fast as I can;
Prick it and prick it,
And mark it with a T,
And there will be enough for Jacky and me.[1]

[edit] The game

The rhyme is often accompanied by hand-clapping between two people, a clapping game. It alternates between a normal individual clap with two-handed claps with the other person. The hands may be crossed as well. This allows for a possibly complex sequence of clapping that must be coordinated between the two. If told by a parent to a child, the "B" and "baby" in the last two lines are sometimes replaced by the child's first initial and first name.[1]

[edit] In popular culture

In film:

  • Bing Crosby and Bob Hope used this rhyme in many of their Road to... pictures (1940-62) when physically threatened, distracting their attacker, and at an appropriate point would switch from patting the "cakes" to suddenly slugging their assailant. On some occasions, they made a self-referential remark that the antagonist in question had/had not seen their previous movies.
  • In the short film Baker's Men, by Harriette Yahr, two little girls de-construct the rhyme coming up with humorous yet poignant insights about it.
  • In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Eddie Valiant takes revealing photographs of Marvin Acme inside Jessica Rabbit's dressing room where they can be heard (and later seen) literally playing "patty cake" and Jessica moaning in a decidedly sexual manner.

In TV:

  • In the episode Hammer Into Anvil (1967) of The Prisoner, as a part of his plot to drive Number 2 into madness, Number 6 sends a message coded in morse that turns out to be the words from the song.
  • The joke used by Crosby and Hope was also attempted by Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and his old army buddy, Sid (Don Rickles) in the Get Smart (1965-70) episode, "The Little Black Book"; in their case, it failed.
  • In an episode of LazyTown (2004-7), Stingy says the last part of the rhyme: "And mark it with an 's' and put it in the oven for me."
  • In the Oobi (2004-7) episode Uma Sick, Oobi and Kako are playing pat-a-cake, pronouncing it like "pah-a-cake."

In popular music:

In musical theatre

In webcomics

  • In the webcomic The Order Of The Stick, the necromancer Tsukiko threatens to force the paladin Thanh to play pattycake with a wight (an undead creature that steals other people's life force by touching them) if the rogue Haley Starshine doesn't leave her hiding place.[2]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 341-2.
  2. ^ http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0517.html.
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