Can anyone answer this? [Old Macdonald]

[Ranger_Jeff]

It was just an alternative to “Fa la la la la” or some other nonsense syllables.
*
Mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da
Wack fall the daddy-o, wack fall the daddy-o*

[minlokwat]

@Yllaria

As confirmed by Snopes, no doubt.

Curse that blasted website.

And I would have had people believing it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.

[Gary_T]

@Ranger_Jeff

Mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da
Wack fall the daddy-o, wack fall the daddy-o*

This is just the Irish (Gaelic) translation of E-I-E-I-O (which is of course English). Now you know what it means in two languages.

[Manduck]

@SeldomSeen

. My opponent cried foul.

With a cluck-cluck here and a cluck-cluck there? Here a cluck, there a cluck, everywhere a cluck-cluck?

[Malacandra]

@Claverhouse

In this once famous 1960s song about the once famous painter, L. S. Lowry, Matchstick Men and Matchstick Dogs, the children’s chorus — now probably grandparents — sing in the background, in Lancastrian accents: 'Eee, Aye, Addy, Addy-O.
Youtube

Yes, if the 1960s extended as far as 1978, and the children weren’t singing The Big Ship Sails on the Ally-Ally-O, and if Brian and Michael’s one claim to fame weren’t Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs

[Elendil_s_Heir]

My young son recently told me this joke:

Q: What was the Mafia kid’s favorite song?
A: “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” (said menacingly): HAD.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

It’s actually a reference to very early computer technology. The original village computers, all Babbage clones, were fed data and returned results using hardwood Elementary Instruction Execution boards.

That’s right, they had E.I.E. I/O.

[Claverhouse]

@Malacandra

Yes, if the 1960s extended as far as 1978, and the children weren’t singing The Big Ship Sails on the Ally-Ally-O,

Before my time; I always assumed that kind of folkiness was redolent of the ‘60s, with cloth caps, an’ The Cloggies strips, an’ the kind of Northern Renaissance of Peter Tinniswood, an’ awful TV comics, an’ cricket before it became the toy of commercialism, an’ kitchen sink realism, an’ ugly housing estates and shopping centres controlled by corrupt Labour councillors, an’ Get Carter. Maybe the North never emerged from the '60s, and lies there rotting in the sun.

Anyway, though I’ve never heard of the Big Ship, the *Ally, Ally-O[/o] still remains nonsense words.

and if Brian and Michael’s one claim to fame weren’t Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs

That seems rather cruel. No doubt they did their best.

[Malacandra]

And their best was pretty darn good, or I wouldn’t be word and note perfect in a song about an obscure Lancashire painter thirty-five years after it was released; it’s just that B&M never achieved any such heights again (and a minor correction as to the title :p).

And thanks for the earworm, while we’re at it. :smack:

As to nonsense words, yes indeed, just not the nonsense words you had in mind. The website linked suggests a connection with the Manchester Ship Canal, which would be ever-present in Lancashire consciousness, but doesn’t posit any etymology.