Where there are Mothers, there also are there Lullabies - The Soothing Lullaby - The Songs of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland - Sorrowful Sleep-songs - The Child's Quaint Taste in Music

Mo sweeter or more tender songs are ever sung than those a mother croons to her baby. A lover's song may have in it passion and ardour, but a mother's lullaby is full of charm and gentleness. So long as man - and woman - have been articulate, so long has the mother rocked her baby to sleep with strange and soothing murmurs. Neolithic woman in her cave hushed her little one to rest with music - sweet, because it was full of love - and even we modern mothers hush our babies to sleep with the old lullabies our mothers used to sing to us.

Unlike other forms of poetry, lullabies are universal. The Esquimaux mother hushes her baby to sleep through the long Arctic nights with a song, even as the Zulu woman murmurs beside her dusky child as the heat of an African day is cooling in twilight. There have always been mothers, and have always been babies; so, naturally, there have always been lullabies.

Songs of the Virgin Mary

Our forefathers believed some of the old songs to have been composed and sung by the Blessed Virgin Mary to her Holy Child. One, full of dignified tenderness, is an old Latin song: "Sleep, oh sleep, dear Baby mine,

King Divine; Sleep, my Child, in sleep recline, Lullaby, mine Infant fair,

Heaven's King, All glittering, Full of grace as lilies rare." It is believed that the charming lullaby which John Farmer, the late well-known music master of Harrow, set to such beautiful melody originated in the sixteenth century. Each verse ends with the plaintive words: " Baloo, my babe, lie still and sleep, It grieves me sore to see thee weep." We all know the dainty, picturesque rhyme of " Lavender's Blue," a creation, with many other delightful lyrics, of the Elizabethan poets. Of the same period is ' Pretty Bobby Shaftoe," played by children in some parts of England as a game. This rhyme is founded on a true story of a heartless gallant and a love-sick maiden. ' Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea, Silver buckles on his knee, He'll come back and marry me, Pretty Bobby Shaftoe." But the last verse tells how " Bobby Shaftoe, bright and fair," was faithless, and never came back to his admiring mistress. Mention of marketing or of money is a favourite subject in the lullabies of other countries than our own. A popular Indian one, "Are koko, jare koko," quoted by Rudyard Kipling in one of his stories, brings in this idea:

" Oh, crow! Go, crow! Baby's sleeping sound, And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound, Only a penny a pound, baby, only a penny a pound."

The Persuasive Lullaby

Primarily the intention of a lullaby was to send the child to sleep. With this end in view, many of them are phrased in a persuasive manner, telling what may be the truth or not of the mother's whereabouts or of the urgent demands upon her time.

A Swedish song, much prettier in the original than in the translation, may be included in this category:

" Hush, hush, baby mine, Pussy climbs the big green pine, Mother turns the mill stone, Father to kill a pig has gone." Another, which I heard this year from a Japanese woman, was evidently composed by a mother who was not in the habit of putting her little one to bed. ' Lullaby, baby, lullaby, baby, Baby's nursie where has she gone? Over the mountains she's gone to the village. And from her village what will she bring? A tum-tum drum and a bamboo stick, A ' daruma ' and a paper dog." If this galaxy of toys was not sufficient. to send a child to sleep quickly, so that the morning should come sooner, it must have been a very spoilt child.

The Mothers of Erin

The Irish hush songs are almost numberless. Mothers of Erin, with their strong belief in fairies and all kinds of superstition, have invented many rhyming charms to guard their babies against the spirits of evil. The following lullaby, so old that its date is lost in obscurity, shows this powerful belief in the " little people." Its phrasing is quaint, but its rhythm is perfect: " I'll put ye myself, my baby, to slumber, Not as is done by the clownish number, A yellow blanket and coarse sheet bringing, But in golden cradle that's softly swinging. To and fro, lulla lo,

To and fro, my bonny baby; To and fro, lulla lo,

To and fro, my own sweet baby."

The smooth, liquid syllables of the Welsh language are specially suited to slumber songs, but some of the English translations are very beautiful. The ancient one usually known as "All through the night" is famous, though partly because of its sweet, haunting melody.

" While the moon her watch is keeping, All through the night,

While the weary world is sleeping, All through the night,

O'er my bosom gently stealing,

Visions of delight revealing,

Breathes a pure and holy feeling, All through the night."

Gaelic Songs

Scotland, also, has a splendid collection of mothers' songs in its own Gaelic. One of the best known on the Border and in the North of England is " Bonny at Morn," a very sweet and true name for baby: The sheep's in the meadow, The kye's in the corn, Thou's ower lang in thy bed, Bonny at morn." A Chinese lullaby is more of a rarity, though the one I refer to has a great likeness to a verse sung by English children in the county of Suffolk when playing the game of " Hod-ma-dod ":

" Snail, snail, come out and be fed, Put out your horns and then your head; And thy mamma will give thee mutton, For thou art doubly dear to me." It is evident that this rhyme has lost a great deal of sense and beauty in the translating.

The Mournful Lullaby

One expects all lullabies to be cheerful, but there are a surprising number which are quite sorrowful. Perhaps these suit better the minor key of music in which all lullabies ought to be written.

' A Sweet Lullaby," in an anthology printed by Nicholas Breton in 1597, has a particularly dismal theme: * Come, little babe, come, silly soul, Thy father's shame, thy mother's grief, Born as I doubt to all our dole, And to thyself unhappy chief: Sing Lullaby and lap it warm, Poor soul that thinks no creature harm." Another, in this same anthology, has a quite unusual measure: ' Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee; Mother's wag, pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy." It is only among the negro population of America that we find any old songs for babies which did not have their origin or are not known in our own country. These old negro lullabies are the parents of the hundreds of coon songs that of late years have inundated England. Many have been adapted and modernised - one of these is the peculiar but charming " Croodlin Doo " (" My Cooing Dove "). Ho, pretty bee, did you see my croodlin doo? Ho, little.lamb, is she jinkin on the lea? Ho, bonny fairy, bring my dearies back to me, Got a lump of sugar and a posie for you - Only bring me back my wee, wee croodlin doo." Babies have the queerest taste in songs, and often what will soothe ninety-nine wide-awake babies will not have the slightest effect on the hundredth. The only tune that a baby of my acquaintance would deign to listen to was the "Merry Widow Waltz," while another infant of three months old seemed to delight in the "Old Hundredth."

Kipling and the Children

Many of our great poets have written lullabies, following the pretty precedent set by Shakespeare:

"Philomel with melody, Sing to our sweet lullaby, Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby, Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh, So, good-night, with lullaby." To Lord Tennyson we are indebted for: "Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea - "Blow, blow, breathe and blow, blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps - sleeps." But of all the modern writers of children's songs there are none with so intense an understanding of their needs as Rudyard Kipling. His stories delight older boys and girls, but the baby has his own little songs.

The Smugglers' Song

The song that Toomai's mother sang to her baby is one of the most appealing of lullabies, telling how the great god Shiva protects even the smallest of the animals:

Shiva, who poured the harvest and made the wind to blow, Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago, Gave to each his portion - food, and toil, and fate From the king upon his guddee to the beggar at the gate.

All things made he - Shiva the Preserver.

Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made all Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,

And mother's heart for sleepy head, oh, little son of mine! " For words that are music in themselves, I do not know truer melody than that of " The Smugglers' Song," the refrain of which goes in short, swinging lines: " Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark, Brandy for the parson,

Baccy for the clerk; Laces for a lady, letters for a spy, And watch the wall, my darling, as the gentlemen go by."

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