This is a good drinking game that I learnt 19 years ago as a student. It was taught to me by my journalism classmate Theuns Laubscher and, as you will see, one learns how to play this game the hard way.
It is a countdown (or rather count-up) from one to eleven, along the lines of “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…” and it gets more difficult as one goes along.
The gamesmaster or -mistress (who has to know the whole story even when extremely drunk) begins with the first line – “One fat hen” – and then everyone in the circle must say the line in turn. After that the second line is added, so that everyone now has to say “One fat hen, a couple of ducks”, and so it goes on until everyone must say all eleven lines in turn.
Hesitation, leaving out stuff, saying the wrong things or mispronunciation leads to a penalty drink for the offender.
Usually, when it gets to line number five or six, people are exasperated by how difficult it seems by then. But with all the repetition, line five eventually rolls smoothly off the tongue while the players are now struggling with line nine or ten.
I most recently played it one night on the ship off which I did my scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and it was great fun.
Here is the whole thing. Enjoy!
- One fat hen
- A couple of ducks
- Three brown bears
- Four running hares
- Five foxy females fixing for a fight
- Six stinking skunks sitting on a stump
- Seven slimy Sicilian sailors solemnly sailing the Seven Seas on a ship
- Eight Cockney sock cutters cockily cutting socks
- Nine nubile nymphomaniacs nibbling nicotine and Nick-Nacks on the Nile
- I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son – I’m only plucking pheasants ’till the pheasant plucker comes
- I’m sailing down the river on a flat-cut punt, not a punt cut flat
Amen.
Nickaboy's Blog 
Reminds me of a song we used to sing at summer camp:
One hen
Two ducks
Three squawking geese
Four limerick oysters
Five corpulent porpoises
Six pair of Don Alvarso’s tweezers
Seven thousand Macedonians dressed in full battle array, hey!
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates, with a marked propensity towards sloth and procrastination
Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who haul quay around the quo of the quivvy of the quarry, ALL AT THE SAME TIME!
Eleven neutramatic synthesizing systems owned by the seriously cybernetic marketing department, shipped via relativistic space flight through the draconian sector seven
Plus at least one more line which eludes me at the moment.
Homebrew
By: Homebrew on February 17, 2009
at 04:57
we did a homebrew similar, and we called the game “one one fat hen” which was catchier than one fat hen.
one one fat hen
two skinny geese
three brown bear
four running hare
Five simple simons sitting in a pool smiling
Six sinful maidens swimming in a brook
seven sailers sailing the seven seas on a pirate ship
8-11 were similar to the origional with some minor changes but since we were drinking i dont remember them haha
and for twelve we did “Twelve: f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f*** f***, Twelve”
and the rule was, you just had to say twelve then drop the F bomb 12 times rapidly then repeat twelve. If you said f*** the wrong amount of times, forgot to say twelve before or after or if you got caught counting on your fingers, you fail. the counting on the fingers gets so many people haha
By: ugzz on May 5, 2011
at 21:01
I think my friends and I had a better one:
1 fat hen
A couple of ducks
Three brown bears
Four running hares
Five fat fickle females sitting sipping scotch
Six Sinbad sailors sailing the seven seas on their sloop
Seven stump sitters sitting on their stums
Eight egotistical egotist echoing their egotistical ecstasies
Nine nude nubiles nibbling nibbling gnats nuts and nicotine
Ten, I never was a fig nor a fig plucker’s son, but I’ll be plucking figs till the fig pluckers come.
By: Dana on November 17, 2011
at 03:06
one hen
two ducks
three cackling geese
four pourpiling porpoises
five limeriking oysters
six pairs of Don Alfredos favorite pairs of tweezers
seven Mastidonian warriors dressed in full battle array
eight brass monkeys from the secret sacred ancient crypts of Rome
nine nibbling gnats nibbling nimbally at nepricorns
ten two ton two tone transcontintal trailways toot toot tooting to tucson
I learned the in the a
Air Force in Germany about 1970
By: jack werling on September 24, 2013
at 01:51
The version that I learned 40 years ago went like this.
One Fat Hen
A couple of Ducks
Three Brown Bears
Four Running Hares
Five Fat Females
Six Sicilian Sailors Sailing the Seven Seas
Seven Simple Simons Sitting on a Stump
Eight Egotistical Egoists Echoing Egotistical Ecstasies
Nine I Slit the Sheet, the Sheet I Slit, Upon the Silted Sheet I Sit
Ten I am Not the Fig Plucker but the Fig Plucker’s Son and I won’t Pluck the Figs Until the Fig Plucker Comes.
Eleven Schist on You Pister, Your Not So Mucken Futch Yourself, and That’s Your Whole Trucken Frouble.
By: Gerry on July 22, 2014
at 15:32