The Pure Joy of Playing Duck and Drake
Learn the fascinating history of the term for skipping stones.
“I remember when rock was young. Me and Susie had so much fun. Holding hands and skimming stones. Had an old gold Chevy, and a place of my own…” Those are, of course, the lyrics to Elton John’s hit rock song “Crocodile Rock” from the Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player album released in 1973. You can appreciate Bernie Taupin’s genius for writing great songs: in just four short lyrics, the song evokes deeply nostalgic memories of early rock, youthful romance and independence, and the memorable pop culture of the late 1960s.
Our interest today, however is in the third line, “Holding hands and skimming stones.” Just about every child who visited a lake, river, or ocean will recall the simple joy of watching a rock skip across the water, miraculously defying gravity until the last moment when, exhausted from its speedy journey, it sinks below the surface. Recently, while doing research on another post, I was skimming volume one of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (known as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles by James Murray, published in 1888) and serendipitously stumbled upon the actual name for skimming stones: duck and drake (or in the plural: ducks and drakes). As I savored the moment of discovering a lexicological treasure, the term instantly cued Crocodile Rock in the jukebox of my mind. A marvelous moment.
Murray defines duck and drake as “a pastime consisting in throwing a flat stone out the like over the surface of the water so as to cause it to rebound or skip as many times as possible before sinking. Chiefly in a phrase, to make a duck and drake, to play (at) duck and drake.” Eliezer Edwards, author of Words, Facts, and Phrases: A Dictionary of Curious, Quaint, and Out-of-the-way Matters (1882) adds this detail: “The first time the stone emerges it is a duck, the second a drake; and so on.” Those of you familiar with fowl nomenclature will know that a duck refers to a female duck, while drake refers to a male. “Drake” is derived from the Old German word meaning “the chief duck.” Murray’s dictionary notes that the first recorded use of the term was in 1583: “A kind of sport or play with an oister [oyster] shell or stone thrown into the water and making circles yer it sinks, etc.”
The term duck and drake is the subject of a four-line rhyme in Percy Green’s A History of Nursery Rhymes (1899):
A Duck, a Drake, a Barley Cake
A duck, a drake, a barley cake
A penny to pay the baker;
A hop, a scotch, another notch –
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.
Published in 1916, The Real Mother Goose illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright presents this variation on the rhyme:
Ducks and Drakes
A duck and a drake,
And a halfpenny cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker.
A hop and a scotch
Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.
Nevertheless, the game of duck and drake is hardly a 16th century invention. It actually goes all the way back to the time of the Ancient Greeks. The ancient Roman scholar Marcus Minucius Felix (died 250 AD) wrote the following description of the game in his dialogue titled Octavius published in 197 AD (Chapter III):
“These stories were related by Octavius, who was discoursing on navigation. But when we had occupied a sufficiently reasonable time of our walk with discourse, retracing the same way again, we trod the path with reverted footsteps. And when we came to that place where the little ships, drawn up on an oaken framework, were lying at rest supported above the (risk of) ground-rot, we saw some boys eagerly gesticulating as they played at throwing shells into the sea. This play is: To choose a shell from the shore, rubbed and made smooth by the tossing of the waves; to take hold of the shell in a horizontal position with the fingers; to whiff it along sloping and as low down as possible upon the waves, that when thrown it may either skim the back of the wave, or may swim as it glides along with a smooth impulse, or may spring up as it cleaves the top of the waves, and rise as if lifted up with repeated springs. That boy claimed to be conqueror whose shell both went out furthest, and leaped up most frequently.”
Around the globe, duck and drake goes by many names. In English it is called: skipping stones, skipping rocks, skimming stones, lobsta cutting (U.S.); stone skiffing (Ireland); skliffing or skiting (Scotland). In other languages duck and drake is called: frog jumps (Bengali); skipping little stones (Cantonese); to make froggies (Czech); slipping (Danish); making ricochets (France); little frogs (Greek); making it walk like a duck (Hungarian); cutting water (Japanese); making the rabbit leap (Mongolian); pancakes (Russian); making white-caps (Spanish); throwing a sandwich (Swedish); letting the frogs out (Ukranian); and tossing stone (Vietnamese).
Of course, like any game there is an art and science to stone skipping — and there are several American and international competitions for stone skipping. The Guinness Book of Records notes that the current world record for number of skips is 88 achieved by American Kurt Steiner in 2013 in Pennsylvania.
Naturally, this amazing achievement begs the question: how does a stone seemingly defy gravity and skip across the water? According to experts, there are four crucial factors: spin, speed, shape, and angle. Moreover, there are two key forces acting on the stone: gravity (pulling the stone down) and lift, the reactive force of the water (pushing the stone each time it hits the surface of the water). A physicist would also add two more factors: the effect of wind and the complex fluid flow around the stone.
Let’s break down the four crucial factors. Spin stablizes the stone and prevents the stone from hitting the water edge-first. A minimum speed (at least 16 feet per second or 11 mile per hour) must be achieved to create lift and provide the energy to keep it bouncing along the surface of the water. The proper shape — flat and round — is ideal because the surface area of the stone maximizes lift to create a bounce on impact. And finally the angle that the stone hits the water will determine the number of skips. The magic angle is 20 degrees.
So the next time you visit a lake or river, turn to your companions and ask “Hey, want a play of a game of duck and drake?” and see who is the first to pick up a stone.
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