Mairzy Doats

"Mairzy Doats"
Song
Recorded	1943
Genre	Novelty
Writer(s)	Milton Drake Al Hoffman Jerry Livingston
Composer(s)	Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, Jerry Livingston

“Mairzy Doats” is a novelty song written and composed, in 1943, by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. It was first played on radio station WOR, New York, by Al Trace and his Silly Symphonists. The song made the pop charts several times, with a version by the Merry Macs reaching No. 1 in March 1944. The song was also a number one sheet music seller, with sales of over 450,000 within the first three weeks of release.

The song's refrain, as written on the sheet music, seems meaningless:

However, the lyrics of the bridge provide a clue:

This hint allows the ear to translate the final line as "[a] kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?"

Drake joined Hoffman and Livingston to come up with a tune for the new version of the rhyme, but for a year no one was willing to publish a "silly song." Finally, Hoffman pitched it to his friend Al Trace, bandleader of the Silly Symphonists. Trace liked the song and recorded it. It became a huge hit, most notably with the Merry Macs' 1944 recording.

Milton Drake, one of the writers, said the song had been 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.)

The scholars Iona and Peter Opie have noted that the last two lines of the song appear in an old catch which, when said quickly, appears to be in Latin:

In fir tar is,
In oak none is,
In mud eels are,
In clay none are,
Goat eat ivy,
Mare eat oats.

They trace the origin of the joke to a manuscript of about 1450 which has "Is gote eate yvy? Mare eate ootys".

In 1958, New Orleans R&B singer Tommy Ridgley released a rock and roll version of "Mairzy Doats" on the Herald Records label as a 7" 45 rpm single (number 526).

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