Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks

Subject: Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks
From: GUEST,wealhtheow
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 10:53 AM

I'm looking for the origins for this family lullaby--came down from my great-grandmother from Ireland, but I've never heard of anyone else using this. Tune is same as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Here are the lyrics I know:

Mumma see the tiny ducks
On the shore the old hen clucks
Mumma tell me what's the matter
Why she's making such a clatter
She is running to and fro
While the ducklings paddling go
Mumma she can't understand
Why they're swimming from the land
She's afraid the water'll hurt them
Into chicks she can't convert them.

Anyone ever heard of this before, or did my great-grandmother just make it up?

Subject: RE: Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 11:15 AM

I find no mention of it on the internet - which is unusual for a children's rhyme.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks
From: black walnut
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 11:40 AM

I tried singing it and I'm missing two lines.   How does it fit with Twinkle? Is there a repeat somewhere?

~b.w.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks
From: GUEST,wealhtheow
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 11:42 AM

There may very well be a missing line in there. I didn't know the last four lines existed until my grandmother starting singing them to my niece a few months ago. Those lines should be sung starting with the "Up above the sky so high..." part, so you're effectively skipping the first two lines of the melody.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 12:11 PM

it makes sense either to just skip the first two lines when your reach "Momma she can't understand"

OR to repeat the first two lines. (which is what I would probably choose)

Subject: RE: Origins: Lullaby--Mumma see the tiny ducks
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 02:33 PM

Wonderful little story. The tune "twinkle..." needs tweaking to fit; no reason to straight-jacket it, or the repeat could be used.

I seem to remember a little story or rhyme in a children's book that I had in the 1930s (some of these books were old then, my father's, retrieved from the basement). But the idea of a chicken hatching duck eggs and her confusion when the ducklings took to water may have been thought of independently more than once.

Agriculture Canada (poultry pub. 1524 on managing a small flock) has a paragraph on using chickens to hatch waterfowl eggs. It cautions one to wet the eggs once a day with lukewarm water.