“Mairzy Doats” is a novelty song written and composed in 1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. It contains lyrics that make no sense as written, but are near homophones of meaningful phrases. The song's title, for example, is a homophone of "Mares eat oats". The song was first played on radio station WOR, New York, by Al Trace and his Silly Symphonists. It 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 Merry Macs recording was Decca Records' best-selling release in 1944. Twenty-three other performers followed up with their own recordings in a span of only two weeks that year. Meaning The song's refrain, as written on the sheet music, seems meaningless: Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? However, the lyrics of the bridge provide a clue: If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey, Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy." This hint allows the ear to translate the final line as "a kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?" 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.) 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. Origins 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