Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man

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"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man" is a traditional English nursery rhyme.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.

Pat it and roll it and mark it with "B"

And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

It is often accompanied by hand-clapping between two people, a clapping game known as pat-a-cake (also rendered as patty-cake or pattycake), after the rhyme. It alternates between a normal individual clap with two-handed claps with the other person. The hands may be crossed as well. This allows for a possibly complex sequence of clapping that must be coordinated between the two.

If told by a parent to a child, the "B" and "baby" in the last two lines are sometimes replaced by the child's first initial and first name.

There are alternative renditions which have the third line as follows:

Pit it and pat it and mark it with "B" (In this version the child pats, then "pricks" the palm with a finger, then draws a "B" on the palm.)

Roll it and roll it and mark it with a "B"

Roll it and pat it and mark it with a "B"

[edit] Other uses

• Bing Crosby and Bob Hope would use this bit in their Road to... pictures when physically threatened. They would go into this routine, distracting their attacker, and at an appropriate point would switch from patting the "cakes" to suddenly slugging their assailant. On some occasions, they made a self referential remark that the antagonist in question had/had not seen their previous movies.

• This same gag was also attempted by Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and his old army buddy, Sid (Don Rickles) in the Get Smart episode, "The Little Black Book"; in their case, it failed.

• Bill Haley & His Comets recorded a rock and roll version of the nursery rhyme in 1953.

• On an episode of The Fall Guy, Colt and Howie did the same thing Bing Crosby and Bob Hope did.

• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie Valiant takes revealing photographs of Marvin Acme inside Jessica Rabbit's dressing room where they can be heard playing "patty cake" and Jessica moaning in a decidedly sexual manner. Later, when Roger is angrily looking through the photos, he cycles them over and over, giving a flipbook-like illusion of Marvin and Jessica playing the games.

• In some people's experiences with pat-a-cake with a parent, the parent may, instead of saying "mark it with a B and put it in the oven..." will say, "Roll it up, Roll it up, put it in the pan!" while gesticulating simulating rolling up dough, then tickling the delighted youngster while saying "put it in the pan!"

• In the musical Sweeney Todd, Tobias recites the rhyme in the last scene, just before he kills Todd.

• In an episode of LazyTown, Stingy says the last part of the rhyme:"And mark it with an 's' and put it in the oven for me."

• In the short film "Baker's Men", by Harriette Yahr, two little girls de-construct the rhyme coming up with humorous yet poignant insights about it.

• In the Clipse song "Grindin'" a lyric goes "patty cake patty cake I'm the bakers man, I bake them cakes as fast as I can".

• In the webcomic The Order Of The Stick, the necromancer Tsukiko threatens to force the paladin Thanh to play pattycake with a wight (an undead creature that steals other people's life force by touching them) if the rogue Harley Starshine doesn't leave her hiding place.[1]