A cockerel crows over a small domestic muddle, a lost shoe and a lost fiddle-stick. Cheerful and easy to sing on a rising-and-falling tune.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Cock-a-doodle-do!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master's lost his fiddle-stick
And knows not what to do.
Cock-a-doodle-do!
What is my dame to do?
Till master finds his fiddle-stick,
She'll dance without her shoe.
About this rhyme
Text confirms the dame dances without her shoe 'till master finds his fiddle-stick' - the two threads are linked in the poem's own (nonsensical) logic, but only the shoe is hers.
A crowing rooster opens this one, then it tips straight into nonsense: a lost shoe, a lost fiddle-stick, and a dame left to dance without her shoe until the fiddle-stick turns up. None of it needs to add up to work as a rhyme.
Crow the first line properly. Most children will crow it back.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition