If Girls They Were Ducks- Muncie (IL) 1907 Doren
[From: Some Play-Party Songs from Eastern Illinois by Carl Van Doren; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 32, No. 126 (Oct. - Dec., 1919), pp. 486-496. His notes follow my comparison to Child's Ballad Text A of 'The Twa Magicians' from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 24; Motherwell's Manuscript, p. 570; has this for stanza nine:
9 Then she became a duck, a duck,
To puddle in a peel,
And he became a rose-kaimd drake,
To gie the duck a dree
Similarly the Twa Magicians has a verse about "hares on the mountain" from which it appears as an Appendix (Bronson).
R. Matteson 2014]
Doren: THE following songs, for the most part, by 1900 were no longer current in the section of Vermilion County, Illinois, from which they have been collected, but were remembered, if at all, only by the older members of the community, and by the young people in certain families which had been little touched by a more sophisticated world. They are here given as they were taken down in 1907 from the recitation of Mr. and Mrs. Knight of Muncie, in that county, who remembered them from the day, not long after the Civil War, when they were widely known in the neighborhood, and furnished the music for all
dances or "play-parties."
Doren comments, "I have not been able to connect this stanza with any others.
8. IF GIRLS THEY WERE DUCKS
If girls they were ducks and would swim on the ocean,
The boys would turn drakes and follow the motion.
Sing hi away, he away, he!