A cake, a halfpenny, and the old game of skimming stones across water, once called ducks and drakes, all tumble together in this playful, slightly nonsensical rhyme.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
A duck and a drake,
And a halfpenny cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker.
A hop and a scotch
Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.
About this rhyme
'Ducks and drakes' is the long-established English name for stone-skimming. · Text confirms the halfpenny cake, the penny to the baker, and the nonsense sign-off 'Slitherum, slatherum, take her.'
Ducks and drakes is the old name for skimming stones across water, and this rhyme is really a chant for playing it, halfpenny cake and all. The nonsense words at the end, slitherum, slatherum, are there for the sound of them and nothing more.
Mime a flat throw across water on the last line.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition