My dad tells me that he learned this song as a child but for years, thought that the words were nonsense.
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and little lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?
In fact, the song is all about animals’ eating habits:
Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy
A kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?
The song demonstrates how, over separate words, consonants and vowels can become tied. This can fool the listener into hearing new, unrecognizable words such as doats and divy (or toats and tivy if you speak like me). This can confuse learners in normal everyday situations. For example, they might here Cotta in “caught a fish”, Timgo in “let him go”, or Diddybite in “Which finger did he bite?”
One, two, three, four, five - Once I caught a fish alive
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten - Then I let him go again
Why did you let him go?
Because he bit my finger so
Which finger did he bite?
This little finger on my right
I like using the Mairzy Doats song because it demonstrates to learners that native English speakers too can be fooled by this phenomenon.
Procedure
One: I like to start by putting students into pairs and asking them to write their own songs. Start by asking them to do the following:
- Think of as many one-syllable animals as possible (frog, dog, cow, bat, bird, bee, etc)
- Think of as many one-syllable things that animals eat as possible (hay, corn, fish, grass, leaves, meat, etc)
- Think of as many two-syllable things that animals eat as possible with a Oo stress pattern (honey, shellfish, cabbage, onions, nectar, insects, carrots, etc)
Two: Next ask them to write a poem using the following template which you can write on the board:
The song provides us with a good opportunity to teach:
- Irregular plurals: mouse → mice; sheep → sheep, goose → geese
- Uncountable food: wheat, bread, sugar, barley, etc
- One syllable nouns with two syllable plurals: horse → horses, orange → oranges (these can’t be used in the song)
- A and an (”a pig will eat salad too”, “an ant will eat insects too”)
- Contaction of will (a pig will eat → a pig’ll eat)
- Word stress. Make sure students understand that:
- O = one syllable
- Oo = two syllables (first strong, second weak, like ivy)
Three: Teach students the rhythm to the Mairzy Doats song by tapping it on a desk. Invite individuals or pairs to recite their work. Alternatively, if you have a brave class, teach them the melody and ask them to sing what they have written. Here are some that my group created:
Dogs eat meat and cats eat meat and little pigs eat salad
A sheep will eat salad too, wouldn’t you?
Birds eat bugs and frogs eat bugs and little ducks eat insects
A fish will eat insects too, wouldn’t you?
Pigs eat cheese and mice eat cheese and little birds eat barley
A horse will eat barley too, wouldn’t you?
Four: Teach the following words:
- Doe (a deer, a female deer)
- Mare (a horse, a female horse)
- Oats (a cereal, used to make porrige)
- Lamb (a sheep, a baby sheep)
- Kid (a goat, a baby goat)
- Ivy (a plant, a climbing plant)
Use Google Image Search to show pictures in each case:
Five: Teach students the Mairzy Toats song and show them the video clip
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
According to Wikipedia:
One of the writers, Milton Drake, says the song is 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 think I like that version better