"Walking in the Zoo" is a popular English

music hall Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...

song published in 1869. It was composed by Alfred Lee with lyrics by Hugh Willoughby Sweny, and was first and most successfully performed by

Alfred Vance Alfred Peek Stevens (1839 – 26 December 1888), best known by his stage name of Alfred Vance, was a 19th-century English music hall singer. He was also known as ''The Great Vance'', and ''Alfred Grenville''. Early life Vance was born in L ...

, billed as "The Great Vance". The song is notable for first popularising, in Britain, both the Americanism " O.K.", and the word "

zoo A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for Conservation biology, conservation purposes. The term ''zoological g ...

" as a short form of " zoological gardens" – specifically, the

London Zoological Gardens London Zoo, also known as ZSL London Zoo or London Zoological Gardens is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. In 1831 or 1832, t ...

. It also introduced to British audiences the American slang word " skedaddle". The song's chorus goes: "Walking in the Zoo, walking in the Zoo / The O.K. thing on Sunday is walking in the Zoo"; and a verse contains the lines "My cousin bolted off without any more ado / And I skidaddled also looking very blue."Walking in the Zoo: lyrics, ''Monologues.co.uk''
Retrieved 15 February 2017

References

External links

at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

1869 songs Music hall songs {{song-stub