Pat-a-cake

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Versions of
Pat-a-cake

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Also Patty-cake: one of the oldest and most widely known surviving English nursery rhymes. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6486. The rhyme is often accompanied by a hand-clapping game.

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

2260127Pat-a-cake

Versions of Pat-a-cake include:

"Patty Cake" in Tommy Thumb's Song Book by Nurse Lovechild (1815 edition).
"Nursery Jingle XVIII" in A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes by Sabine Baring-Gould (1895).
"Pat-a-cake" in A Book of Nursery Rhymes by Charles Welsh (1901).