A History of Nursery Rhymes Part 2

As in Norway so in the Isle of Man, and in the western districts of Ireland.

In Man until the fifties many of the inhabitants believed in the Spirit of the Mountains; indeed, even in County Donegal and the West Riding of Yorkshire, up to the last twenty years, fairy superst.i.tion was rife.

Boyd Dawkins gives in his chapter, "Superst.i.tion of the Stone Age: Early Man in Britain," an account of an Isle of Man farmer who, having allowed investigation to be made in the interests of science on portions of his lands, becoming so awed at the thought of having sanctioned the disturbing of the dead, that he actually offered up a heifer as a burnt sacrifice to avert the wrath of the Manes. After lunar and solar worships this ancestral worship of the Isle of Man farmer ranks next in point of age, a survival of which is seen in the respect paid by country people to the fairies, the goblins, and the elves. Equally so has the spirit of former beliefs been handed down to us in the song of the nurse, and in the practices of rural people.

A modernised lullaby of a Polish mother bears traces in the last stanza of a quasi-native worship--

"Shine, stars, G.o.d's sentinels on high, Proclaimers of His power and might, May all things evil from us fly; O stars, good-night, good-night!"

Other instances of nature worshippers are amusing as well as being instructive. The Ojebway Indians believe in the mortality of the sun, for when an eclipse takes place the whole tribe, in the hope of rekindling the obscured light, keep up a continual discharge of fire-tipped arrows from their bows until they perceive again his majesty of light. Amongst the New Caledonians the wizard, if the season continue to be wet and cloudy, ascends the highest accessible peak on a mountain-range and fires a peculiar sacrifice, invoking his ancestors, and exclaiming--

"Sun, this I do that you may be burning hot, And eat up all the black clouds of the sky,"

reminding one of the puerile cry of the weather-bound nursery child--

"Rain, rain, go away, Come again another day."

Wind-making among primitive people was universally adopted; even at a late period the cultured Greeks and Romans believed in a mythical wind G.o.d.

It was the custom of the wind clan of the Omahas to flap their overalls to start a breeze, while a sorcerer of New Britain desirous of appeasing the wind G.o.d throws burnt lime into the air, and towards the point of the compa.s.s he wishes to make a prosperous journey, chanting meanwhile a song. Finnish wizards made a pretence of selling wind to land-bound sailors. A Norwegian witch once boasted of sinking a vessel by opening a wind-bag she possessed. Homer speaks of Ulysses receiving the winds as a present from aeolus, the King of Winds, in a leather bag.

In the highlands of Ethiopia no storm-driven wind ever sweeps down without being stabbed at by a native to wound the evil spirit riding on the blast. In some parts of Austria a heavy gale is propitiated by the act and speech of a peasant who, as the demon wings his flight in the raging storm, opens the window and casts a handful of meal or chaff to the enraged sprite as a peace offering, at the same time shouting--

"There, that's for you; stop, stop!"

A pretty romance is known in Bulgarian folk-lore. The wife of a peasant who had been mysteriously enticed away by the fairies was appealed to by her husband's mother to return.

"Who is to feed the babe, and rock its cradle?"

sang the grandmother, and the wind wafted back the reply--

"If it cry for food, I will feed it with copious dews; If it wish to sleep, I will rock its cradle with a gentle breeze."

How devoid of all sentiment our Englished version of the same tale reads.

"Hush-a-bye, baby, on a tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down comes the baby and cradle and all."

No wonder this purposeless lullaby is satirised in the orthodox libretto of Punch's Opera or the Dominion of Fancy, for Punch, having sung it, throws the child out of the window.

The poetic instinct of the German mother is rich in expression, her voice soothing and magnetic as she sways her babe to and fro to the melody of--

"Sleep, baby, sleep!

Thy father tends the sheep, Thy mother shakes the branches small, Whence happy dreams in showers fall.

Sleep, baby, sleep!

"Sleep, baby, sleep!

The sky is full of sheep, The stars the lambs of heaven are, For whom the shepherd moon doth care.

Sleep, baby, sleep!"[F]

The lullaby of the Black Guitar, told by the Grimm brothers in their German fairy tales, gives us the same thought.

"Thou art sleeping, my son, and at ease, Lulled by the whisperings of the trees."

Another German nurse song of a playful yet commanding tone translates--

"Baby, go to sleep!

Mother has two little sheep, One is black and one is white; If you do not sleep to-night, First the black and then the white Shall give your little toe a bite."

A North Holland version has degenerated into the flabby Dutch of--

"Sleep, baby, sleep!

Outside there stands a sheep With four white feet, That drinks its milk so sweet.

Sleep, baby, sleep!"

The old English cradle rhyme, evidently written to comfort fathers more than babies, is given by way of contrast, and, as is usual with our own countrymen, the versification is thoroughly British, slurred over and slovenly--

"Hush thee, my babby, Lie still with thy daddy, Thy mammy has gone to the mill To grind thee some wheat To make thee some meat, Oh, my dear babby, do lie still!"

The Danish lullaby of

"Sweetly sleep, my little child, Lie quiet and still.

The bird nests in the wood, The flower rests in the meadow gra.s.s; Sweetly sleep, my little child."

This last recalls the esteem our Teuton ancestors had for their scalds, or polishers of language, when poetry and music were linked together by the voice and harp of minstrelsy, and when the divine right to fill the office of bard meant the divine faculty to invent a few heroic stanzas to meet a dramatic occasion.

One more well-known British lullaby--

"Bye, baby bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting To get a little _hare skin_ To wrap the baby bunting in."

The more modern version gives "_rabbit skin_."

FOOTNOTES:

[B] _Times'_ report, February 10th, 1897.

[C] F. SPIEGEL.

[D] WELCKER, _Griechische Gotterlehre_, i. 551.

[E] TYLOR.

[F] Wagner introduced the music to which it is sung in his _Siegfried_ idyll.

CHAPTER IV.

"One very dark night, when the goblins' light Was as long and as white as a feather, A fairy spirit bade me stray Amongst the gorse and heather.