The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118015   Message #2549091
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
25-Jan-09 - 06:29 PM
Thread Name: Hostile baby rocking songs
Subject: RE: Hostile baby rocking songs
Roud 357, and evidently of C19 Irish origin in that form ( broadsides: Rocking the Cradle ); though the basic pattern is found in English broadside songs back as far as Lawrence Price's 'Rocke the cradle John' of c.1635:

Rocke the Cradle, rocke the Cradle, rocke the cradle John,
Ther's many a man rockes the cradle, when the childs none of his owne.

Of course, it isn't a lullaby, but a song about a man singing one. Any reference to slavery is likely to be a modern gloss. See past discussions here for more detail.

'Go From My Window' (Roud 966) is interesting, too. See thread Lyr Req: A parody of 'go from my window' for some of its early history. A L Lloyd (Folk Song in England, 186-190) goes into further detail, including the point that the accompanying story was also known in England (Baring-Gould heard it from a Dartmoor blacksmith) though, as Jim has said, the song seems more usually to have been sung without additional apparatus, which probably evolved in order to explain what had originally been obvious in the song itself.

Again, a song about a lullaby rather than a lullaby as such, though Lloyd quoted from several Spanish analogues which were actually used as lullabys in their own right.