I saw a ship a sailin’,
A sailin’ on the sea,
And oh, it was laden
With pretty things for me [thee].
There were comfits in the cabin,
And apples in the hold;
The sails were made of silk,
And the masts were made of gold.
Four and twenty sailors
That sat upon the deck,
Were four and twenty white mice
With chains about their necks.
The captain was a duck,
With a packet on his back;
And when the ship began to move,
The captain cried “Quack! quack!”
—Northamptonshire, Revue Celtique, iv. 200; Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, No. ccclxxvii.
(b) A number of little girls join hands and form a ring. They all jump round and sing the verses. The game ends by the girls following one of their number in a string, all quacking like ducks.—Northamptonshire.
(c) Halliwell does not include it among his games, but simply as a nursery paradox. The tune given is that to which I as a child was taught to sing the verses as a song. We did not know it as a game. The “Quack, quack!” was repeated as another line to the notes of the last bar given, the notes gradually dying away (A. B. Gomme).
Duck Friar
The game of “[Leap-frog].”—Apollo Shroving, 1627, p. 83.