Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:49 AM I've always known it as Ladybird, Ladybird fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children are gone... Which is if anything, rather worse than just being in danger of burning. And that's how the Opies have it the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes - with a note saying (among other things) "The rhyme is undoubtedly a relic of something once possessed of an awful significance" - but that might be tongue in cheek. But I've never hear of anyone using this as a lullaby. It's what you say to a ladybird to encourage it to fly off to a safe place when its somewhere where it might get hurt. Incidentally, why do Americans call them "ladybugs"? After all, they aren't bugs any more than they are birds, they are beetles. |
Subject: RE: rocking songs with a threat From: peregrina Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:44 AM The above is *threatening*, rather than hostile... the motif of the promised gifts (that the mother wishes to, but probably cannot, give the child) followed by the threat of the diablo blanco if the child will not sleep.. |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: peregrina Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:42 AM Duerme Negrito (sung by Atahalpa Yupanqui, Mercedes Sosa...below Sosa's version) Lyrics to Duerme Negrito : Duerme, duerme, negrito Que tu mama está en el campo, negrito Duerme, duerme, mobila Que tu mama [es]tá en el campo, mobila Te va traer codornices Para ti. Te va a traer rica fruta Para ti Te va a traer carne de cerdo Para ti. Te va a traer muchas cosas Para ti. Y si el negro no se duerme Viene el diablo blanco Y zas le come la patita Chicapumba, chicapumba, apumba, chicapumba. Duerme, duerme, negrito Que tu mama [es]tá en el campo, Negrito Trabajando Trabajando duramente, (Trabajando sí) Trabajando e va de luto, (Trabajando sí) Trabajando e no le pagan, (Trabajando sí) Trabajando e va tosiendo, (Trabajando sí) Para el negrito, chiquitito Para el negrito si Trabajando sí, Trabajando sí Duerme, duerme, negrito Que tu mama está en el campo Negrito, negrito, negrito. |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Bonnie Shaljean Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:42 AM [From] http://www.celticbug.com/Legends/Lore.html Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home Your house is on fire, your children will burn Except little Nan, who sits in a pan Weaving gold laces as fast as she can In Medieval England, the farmers would set torches to the old Hop vines after the harvest, to clear the fields for the next planting. The poem was a warning to the aphid-eating Ladybugs, still crawling on the vines in search of aphids. The Ladybugs' children (larvae) could get away from the flames, but the immobile pupae (Nan) remained fastened to the plants (laces) and couldn't escape. |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Bonnie Shaljean Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:36 AM Ron, that was the version of Ladybug that I learned too (central California). |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Bonnie Shaljean Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:34 AM > songs to accompany euthanasia rituals Voluntary euthanasia or compulsory? I'm not trying to be a smart-alec, just that I'd never heard of such a thing outside of fiction and it's fascinating, if grim. Who was being euthanised, and why? Was that a society in which people officially outlived their usefulness, either from senescence or illness? I wonder how they decided where to draw the line - not at a pre-ordained age, I hope. If it's too much of a thread creep, maybe another one about death croons? I find the subject really interesting, and hadn't thought about it before. Laments, yes, but they're not quite the same thing. Amazing stuff, Jack |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Ron Davies Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:22 AM Actually the "Ladybug, Ladybug" I heard is even worse. "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home Your house is on fire, your children will burn..." |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: GUEST,Jack Campin Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:16 AM There is a less common category of lullabies to the dying, which survives in the "Death Croon" from the Western Isles of Scotland and in bunch of songs of the Adyghe of the Caucasus. According to the article in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, the Adyghean songs have many weird, surreal black jokes - the writer conjectures that they were originally songs to accompany euthanasia rituals. |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Bonnie Shaljean Date: 24 Jan 09 - 06:14 AM Oh wow, if you guys want hostile, check out Marina Warner's book No Go The Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock, which won the Briggs Folklore Award. (Azizi, did you ever come across this?) Go to Amazon - using the Mudcat link on the introductory page of course - and browse the reviews, which pretty much say everything I could. She cites the Icelandic lullaby The Child In The Sheepfold wherein the baby sings to its mother, rather than the other way around, and you discover that the baby has been deliberately left outside in the cold to die. While the mother is milking a ewe in the sheepfold she complains to another dairymaid of having no fine clothes to wear to go to a dancing and storytelling festival (vikivaki). Then they hear a tiny voice coming from under the wall, who soothes the mother thus: Mother mine, don't weep As you milk the sheep, sheep I can lend my rags to you So you'll go a-dancing too You'll go a-dancing too I wonder if Skarpi ever heard this, and what his take on it is. There's also this, from Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book of 1744, which is demeaning rather than hostile, though I can imagine it being sung affectionately: Piss-a-Bed Piss-a-Bed Barley Butt Your Bum is so heavy You can't get up But it still gets left out of the modern anthologies. Interestingly, I have a photocopy of an unpublished 1799 handwritten manuscript of Kentish dancing-master's fiddle tunes, and one of them is called Barley Butt, though it's a slide-like jig (there are a lot of Irish tunes in that collection) and not a gentle lulling melody. I always wondered about that title - sounds like the sort of insult we used to hurl at each other in high school. Not exactly sure what a barley-butt IS, though my imagination quite happily supplies all sorts of unsavoury images. Warner remarks that the early printed tradition includes many harsh or bawdy lyrics, worn smooth over time. And yes, Rock-A-Bye-Baby's in there, from Gammer [Granny] Gurton's Garland, 1783 and no doubt other sources. Remember Maggie's terrified reaction when Marge sang it to her in a Simpsons episode? |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: GUEST,Jack Campin Date: 24 Jan 09 - 04:46 AM Try this album from the Turkish label Kalan Muzik: Anatolian Lullabies The notes (Turkish/English) are excellent and point out that being a new bride with a new baby in a traditional Anatolian culture is a grim experience - away from your own family, treated like a slave by your husband's, and with nobody to talk to but a pink blob that doesn't understand a word you say. So you let it all out to the baby anyway. The songs are in an amazing variety of languages, mostly untranslated but often summarized. Mostly field recordings but some studio performances. |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 24 Jan 09 - 04:43 AM "I Went to the Animal Faire" (what did become of the Monk?)and
Another One of my favorites - From: Alice in Woderland - the Duchess Scene
....The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby....
'Speak roughly to your little boy,
CHORUS.
(In which the cook and the baby joined):--
'Wow! wow! wow!'
While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:--
'I speak severely to my boy, CHORUS.
'Wow! wow! wow!'
'Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!' the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke....
From the Disney Theme Park "Bear Country Jamboree" (circa 1963)
Momma don't whup little Beuford
These old timers
Even their nursery rhymes are distinctive, full of religious and national sentiment, and may be counted on the fingers of one hand....but so important are the two Hebrew rhymes considered to be that every pious Jew teaches his child their significance. A translation of the principal one, found in the Sepher Haggadah, a Hebrew hymn in the Chaldee language, runs thus:--
_Recitative._
"A kid, a kid, my father bought
* * *
Then came the cat and ate the kid
Now for the interpretation--for it is a historical and a prophetic nursery rhyme. The kid which Jehovah the father purchased denotes the select Hebrew race; the two pieces of money represent Moses and Aaron; the cat signifies the Assyrians, by whom the ten tribes were taken into captivity; the dog is representative of the Babylonians; the staff typifies the Persians; the fire is Alexander the Great at the head of the Grecian Empire; the water the Roman domination over the Jews; the ox the Saracens who subdued the Holy Land and brought it under the Caliph; the butcher is a symbol of the Crusaders' slaughter; the Angel of Death the Turkish power; the last stanza is to show that God will take vengeance on the Turks when Israel will again become a fixed nation and occupy Palestine. The Edomites (the Europeans) will combine and drive out the Turks.
And of course:
"Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home,
Also from the above source Chapter X p 141-152.
"Little General Monk
Sincerely, |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: VirginiaTam Date: 24 Jan 09 - 03:51 AM Where did I read that songs about killing changelings were a sort justification for the infanticide of disabled children? |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: meself Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:12 AM Okay, Joe beat me to that - I give up! Anybody seen my damn soother? |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: meself Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:10 AM Oh - sorry - I was nodding off to sleep and missed that in your original post. Okay, as a bit of compensation - there are a few southern American ones with the verse to the effect, "If the baby's going to cry,/Stick my finger in the baby's eye." Seems hostile, all right! |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Joe Offer Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:10 AM Well, Abby, the Brahms Lullaby is suspicious, what with that line about being stuck with little nails. I think Brahms should be taken in for questioning. I've crosslinked a lot of lullaby threads above, mostly ones of the ilk you seek. Don't forget "All the Pretty Little Horses" (Bees an' the butterflies peckin' out his eyes); and "What'll We Do With the Baby-O." Maybe we should take Peggy Seeger and Rosalie Sorrels in for questioning, too. -Joe Offer, singer of children's songs- (who also should be taken in for questioning) |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Melissa Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:08 AM Olive Oyl (Popeye) sang: every time the baby cries stick my finger in the baby's eyes |
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs From: meself Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:07 AM Um ... Rock-a-Bye Baby? |
Subject: Hostile baby rocking songs From: Abby Sale Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:47 AM Seems that most societies have hostile baby rocking songs. Songs to croon to your loved one at 3 AM. Rosalie Sorrels explains this nicely at Clicky. All know "Rockabye Baby" (fall out of tree and DIE) and I used to sing 'Siembamba' to my little loved one. (But I also crooned Scottish murder ballads). Can you cite/quote others in English or any other language? |
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