Folksongs and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby

Author(s): Bess Lomax Hawes

Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 87, No. 344 (Apr. - Jun., 1974), pp. 140-148
Published by: American Folklore Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/539474
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 BE SS LOMAX HAWES

Folksongs and Function

SomeThoughtson theAmericanLullaby

GENREIDENTIFICATION ANDDESCRIPTION is a problemmuch discussedbyfolk-

loristsin recentyears.Ultimatelyit is probablyan unsolvableone, but-as in the
fairy tales-the quest is likely the most interestingpart of the story,for it leads
one into intellectualconfrontationswith anomaliesthatone would otherwiseprob-
ablyavoid.
Some yearsago, hearingof my interestin children'ssong, a youngwoman in
her late twentiesintroducedherself to me and said that she had been broughtup
in Chicagoand thather mother,a youngwidow, had sungher to sleep everynight
with the same song. And then, with the most extraordinary mixtureof emotions
on her face-half genuine sentimental reverie,half self-consciousamusement-
she sangme whatshe herself identifiedas a "funnykind of lullaby":

m a,w.id-I
I ~~I
j e I n4ae - 41I
2Ar ,S...
l! knw
!I
...|
•
,IF ,,,
! l fSltIrIfISue,
P i |
,,

uas c/ife(" 4t-,cerPraf27- sfEli~~~~t~-y

Srric- no
(o~nbffli~rAvei~.s~iat

A erairs,
M "V Axad. sfJz&)QdAs9 -srert4

~Ii spiew w sIw W &rIa4W rI c4.rWa

A(e

I helped the young woman notate her song (she was pleased, becauseshe
wanted to preserveit for her own children), and todayin the folklore archives

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FOLKSONG AND FUNCTION: THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN LULLABY 141
at CaliforniaStateUniversityat Northridge"SlewfootSue: a Lullaby"staresup
at me wheneverI open the lullabyfolder, where it lies tuckedin betweenfrag-
mentsof Brahms,various"RockabyeBabies"and "Go Tell Aunt Rhodys,"a few
babygameslike "ThisLittlePiggy,"anda coupleof erranthymns.'All arelabeled
"lullabies"by their studentcollectors;I assumethis mustmean "songsassociated
with childrengoing to bed."
When I had occasion,in 1970, to examinethe folklore archivesat the Uni-
versityof Californiaat Berkeley,it was interestingto discoverexactlythe same
peculiarmelange of materialsin its lullaby section. Slightly over half the songs
includedhad texts that did not mentiongoing to sleep at all; therewere ten or so
miscellaneous"children's"songs aboutanimals,birds, and the like; two infant
games;a hymn;and severalsongs that can only be categorizedas adult-for ex-
ample, the following, collected in 1964 by Kathleen Whitney from a twenty-
five-year-old woman of AmericanProtestantbackground,who describedit as
her "favoritelullaby" (from the Universityof Californiaat Berkeleyfolklore
archives;tunenot given) :
There'sa mancomesto ourhouseeverysingleday,
Papagoesto workandthemancomesto stay.
Papadoesthework,andmamagetsthepay,
Andthemancomestoourhouseeverysingleday.
The use of such non-sleep-centered
songs at bedtimedoes not seem to be en-
tirely a middle-classor urbanphenomenon;that is, it is not simplya functionof
the parent'slack of a "suitable"repertory.When I asked Mrs. Bessie Jones, a
blacklady from ruralGeorgiaand mistressof a fine traditionof childrens'songs,
whatsheusedto sing babiesto sleep,she told me:
I sang to babiesso much,just all churchsongs,you know,just sing and sing and sing, just
anythingI couldthinkof. And at last one day,I jumpedoff on "CaseyJones."Mamacome
to the door,she say, "Well!I neverheardnobodyput no babiesto sleepon 'CaseyJones'!"
I had just sungon out ... I had just sung and sung and sung,and he wouldn'tgo to sleep,
so I got off on "CaseyJones"!I singall mannerof songs...2
And then I rememberedsinging my own babiesto sleep. I happen to know
quite a numberof lullabiesmyself, and I come from a lullaby-singingfamily;but
the song that alwaysseemedto "work"best-my stand-byold reliablein timesof
stress-was the fine old Protestanthymn "I Am BoundFor the PromisedLand."
The classificationproblemsuggestedhere is by no meansa new one and can be
simply stated: is a song a function of its lexical contentor its social usage?Is a
lullabya song aboutgoing to sleep, or is it anysong on any subjectthat is used to
induce slumber?The dual allegiances,literaryand anthropological,of the dis-
cipline of folklore announcethemselvesunderthe most trivialof circumstances;
and I supposethat by the simple act of filing "SlewfootSue" under "lullaby"I
have aligned myself irrevocably with the anthropological (or, at least, the func-
tional) wing.
1 My thanks go to Joanne Matthews for contributing her mother's lullaby to the California State
University at Northridge folklore archives in 1959. I would also like to express here my appreci-
ation to Alan Dundes for permission to cite materials from the University of California at
Berkeley
archives and for helpful comments during my early work on this project.
2 BessieJonesand Bess LomaxHawes,StepIt Down (New
York, 1972), 5.

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142 BESS LOMAX HAWES

Of course,as far as the act of archivinggoes, it doesn'treallymatter;you pay

yourmoneyand you takeyourchoice,and then you can settlebackinto what Ger-
shon Legmanhas referredto as "thegreatpeaceof non-understanding.''3 But the
functionalistposition, as enunciatedby Malinowski,is most demanding:"The
functionalview of culturelaysdownthe principlethatin everytypeof civilization,
everycustom,materialobject, idea and belief fulfills some vital function,repre-
sentsan indispensablepartwithin a workingwhole."4If this is true-and it seems
at the least to representa sensibleworkingpremise-it suggestsby extensionthat
thereshouldbe some degreeof appropriateness betweena functionand the group
of itemsa cultureuses to fulfill thatfunction.This qualityof appropriateness
may
be found on the level of form, structure,contentor stylistics;and the degree of
appropriatenessis easily recognizedby carriersof the culture.Both Mrs. Jones
and her mother,for example,seemedto feel a certainlackof congruencebetween
the contentandstyle of "CaseyJones"and the functionof puttinga babyto sleep.
The presentdiscussionis an examinationof the culturalnormsgoverningthe
ratherbizarrecongregationof itemsthatAmericanadultschooseto use in getting
a young child or infant readyto go to sleep. Althoughthe concentrationwill be
mainlyon problemsof text, there are at least threestylisticqualifierswhichmust
be mentionedas preliminaryconcerns.
The firstis rhythm.Americanparentsseemto relyheavilyon a straightforward,
non-complex,swayingmeter,normally4/4, to producea suitablyquietingeffect.
This is not a pan-humantrait;to cite only one contrastiveexample,A. M. Jones
describesa methodof soothingsleeplessbabiesused by the Ewe people of West
Africa, which relies on a complexand syncopatedrhythm.5Clearly,Ewe parents
canno morestanda cryingbabythancantheirAmericancousins;the mothertakes
the baby'shands and the fatherhis feet and they swing the child betweenthem,
hammockfashion,in a slow wide arc,with a pauseat the top of everythirdswing.
The movementis performedin what may be roughlydescribedas duple meter,
and the accompanyingsong is essentiallyin 3/4; when combinedwith the pause,
the overalleffectis of extremesyncopation.I havenevertriedit with an American
baby. It seems likely, though, that by the age of three or four monthsan infant
would be stimulated,ratherthansoothed,by suchactions.All the Americansongs
used as lullabiesthat I have testedcanbe slowed to our favorite,supremelyregu-
lar, simplemetersof either4/4 or 3/4 time.
A second stylistic qualifier concernsthe patterningof preferredphonemic
choices,particularlythose apparentin hummingor in the use of nonsensesylla-
bles. Alan Lomaxand the linguist Edith CrowellTragerhave hypothesizedthat
folksong areascan be partlydefinedin termsof vowel preferencepatterns.These
basic patternsof assonanceseem particularlyevident in the texts of lullabies.
Lomaxremarks:
Spain is a region of lullaby singing-often rare in other parts of the world. Each lullaby
has a refrain consisting of a characteristicset of syllables. In recording scores of lullabies, I
observed that the effect of lullabies on the child was to put it to sleep even when the singing
took place during a recording session in the presence of the entire village. There was a

3 Gershon Legman, The Horn Book (New York, 1964), 285.

4 Abram Kardiner and Edward Preble, They Studied Man (New York, i961), 173.
5 A. M. Jones,Studies in African Music (London,1959) , 22-23; II, 2.

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FOLKSONG AND FUNCTION: THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN LULLABY 143
markedchangefrom northernto southernSpainin termsof the vowel set composingthe
lullaby refrain,and it occurredto me that perhapsvowel preferenceswere implantedby
mothersin their childrenduringinfancy and that these patternshelped to shape the de-
velopmentof adultfolk song.6

Although the Lomax/Trager study centers primarily on adult folksong, it

seems, on the basis of their extensive Spanish and other data, that the hypothesis
may be verifiable. I am unable to pursue this interesting suggestion here, primarily
becausecomparabledata are simply not available;however,there are some asso-
ciated observations to be made.
Americanlullabies,on the whole and in contrastto the situationdescribedin
Spain, fit our generallywordy adult singing style and do not reallyfeaturenon-
sense syllables.However, there is evidenceboth in the CSUN and the Berkeley
archivesthat much non-verbalsinging, usually describedas "humming,"takes
place in the lullaby context . Brahms' lullaby is reported frequently, for example,
but generallyin fragmentaryform, becauseapparentlyfew people choose to re-
memberthe syrupyEnglishtranslation.My hunchis thata numberof othertunes
are also typicallysung without words and that nonsensesyllables,such as "dee
dee" or "na na," are used ratherthan strict humming.Unfortunately,it is the
rarecollectorwho reportssuch non-word-centereddata. If more detailedcollec-
tions were available,however,it would be surprisingif it did not evinceregional
or subculturalpatterning,in view of the longevityand persistenceof some non-
senserefrainsin othergenresof folksong.
A final stylisticqualifierreflectsthe relationshipbetweensinging and a larger
patternof socialintercourse.A song is a communicativeact, and to some degree
"fits"the overallcommunicativestyle of the society.7This point can be clarified
by viewingcomparativedata,specifically,a cross-cultural studyby William Caudill
and Helen Weinstein,which detailsthe resultsof an intensiveexaminationof the
interactionalpatternsbetweenJapanesemothersand their infants below the age
of four months, as contrastedwith those of Americanmothersand their infants
of the same age range."In the courseof this research,observersvisited in the
homesand noted the amountof time the variousmothersspent feeding, holding,
or rockingtheirbabies,as well as the kinds of behaviorsengagedin by the babies
duringthesecontacts.
In the sphereof oralcommunication, the babies'actionswereclassifiedas either
"happyvocalizing"or "unhappyvocalizing,"a reasonablyobvious distinction.
The descriptionof the mothers'verbalbehavioris, however,more complex.The
overallcategory"mothertalksto baby"wassubdivided
into chats and lulls. "Lulls" is a very delimited variable and means that the caretaker is

6 Alan Lomax and Edith

Crowell Trager, "Phonotactique du chant populaire," L'Homme:
Revue Francaise d'Anthropologie, 4 (1964), 5. English translation courtesy of Alan Lomax, Co-
lumbia University.
7
I am indebted for this general formulation to the research in cantometrics conducted by Alan
Lomax. See Lomax, Folk Song Style and Culture (New York, 1969).
8 William Caudill and Helen
Weinstein, "Maternal Care and Infant Behavior in Japan and
America," Psychiatry, 32 (1969), 12-43. This study was confined to urban middle-class families
in both Japan and the United States; corollary investigations, however, suggest that the results
of the research hold true across class lines in both cultures and thus that cultural, rather than social,
variations were exposed. See pp. 13-16.

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144 BESSLOMAXHAWES
softly singing or humming a lullaby, or making repetitive comforting noises, with the ap-
parent intent of soothing and quieting the baby or getting him to go to sleep. "Chats" in-
cludes all other vocalizations to the infant, such as talking to him, singing to him in a lively
fashion, and playing word games, such as "boo" and "goo" with him.9
It is here, in the mothers' behavior,that the culturallydistinctivefeatures
emerge. Caudill and Weinstein report that, although Japaneseand American
mothersspend almost exactlythe same total amountof time "talkingto" their
infants, their communicativestyles within that overall categoryare significantly
different.On the basisof adjustedmeanfrequencies,the ratioof "chats"to "lulls"
for the Japanesemother was 79 to 22; comparablestatisticsfor the American
mothershow a ratioof I20 "chats"to 3 "lulls"-a strikingdisproportion.'x
In termsof the interactionbetweenmotherand child, there is a strongcorrela-
tion betweenthe Americaninfant'shappyvocalizingand the Americanmother's
chatting,a relationshipthat is actuallyreversedin the Japanesedata;that is, the
Japanesemother'schattingcorrelatesonly with her infant'sunhappyvocalizing.
Caudilland Weinstein speculatethat the chattingbehaviormay effectivelybe re-
servedby the Japanesemotherfor occasionswhen the babyneedsdistraction.They
concludein summarythatthe Japanesemother
does more lulling, carrying and rocking of her baby. She seems to try to soothe and quiet
the child and to communicate with him physically rather than verbally. On the other hand
the American... motherin her care does morelookingat and chattingto her baby.She
seemsto stimulatethebabyto activityandtovocalresponse. mother
It is asif theAmerican
wantedto havea vocal,activebaby,andtheJapanese motherwantedto havea quiet,con-
of the mothersin the twocultures,they
tentedbaby.In termsof the stylesof caretaking
seemtogetwhattheyapparently want.1"
The wide rangeof subjectmatterselectedby the Americanmotherwhen put-
ting her child to sleep becomesless puzzling. The chattingstyle of interaction,
associatedas it is with happyvocalizingon the part of the infant, is carriedinto
the bedtimecontext.And, as the child learnsto speakand can chat backand ask
for what he wants to hear, he is alreadyadjustedto a communicationstyle with
the parentthatis far-rangingin subjectmatter,cheerful,and emotionallyperhaps
a bit dispassionate.In my own experiencewith putting two- and three-year-olds
to bed, I found thatat thatage they activelyresistanythingthat smacksof lulling,
but areso enamoredof the chattingstylethattheyform possiblythe most enthusi-
asticallyreceptiveaudiencein the United Statesfor the myriadstanzasof the tra-
ditionalballad.Length-prolonging the pleasantcontact-appearsto be the major
estheticcriterionfor this age range.
On the basis of the foregoing stylistic criteria-simple meter, complex pho-
nemic patterning,and the tendencytowardverbal contactwith the child on an
adultand chattylevel--"Slewfoot Sue"maynot, afterall, be a particularlybizarre
or outlandishchoicefor a bedtimesong. What is still unclearis the exactcontext
within whichthe song was used. I have evidence,bothfrom interviewsand obser-
vation, that putting a small child to bed in the United States is often a two-phase
operation: a period of chatting during which infant games may be played, miscel-

9 Ibid., 23.
10 Ibid., 29.
1x Ibid., 31.

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FOLKSONG AND FUNCTION: THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN LULLABY 145
laneousfavoritesongs sung, or storiestold; followed by a briefertime for lulling
-singing sleep-centeredor otherwisequieting songs, rocking,and the like. By
the time the child is two or three,the secondphasehas almostalwaysdroppedout.
Manyparents,indeed, neverlull at all, but simplychatwith the babyfor a while
and leavehim to fall asleepon his own.12
The chattingphasecan,by definition,encompassa repertoryof song unlimited
in subjectmatter.The repertoryused in the lulling phase,whereit exists,is more
difficultto ascertain,becauseAmericanmothers,unlikethe Spanishwomenwhom
Lomaxdescribes,seeminvariablyto performthis functionin spatialisolationwith
theirbabies.My hunch13is that a varietyof songsareused,and thatthe two reper-
toriesare not as far apartin subjectmatteras might be supposed.Lackinganybut
the most fragmentaryevidence,however,I must fall backon the literarycriterion
and makethe straightforward assumptionthatwhen Americanparentssing songs
that talk about going to sleep, they have actuallyreachedthe stage when they
wantthe babyto go to sleep.
A brief essayby TheresaBrakeleyprovidesa useful general summaryof the
textual content of the linguisticallydefinablelullaby, though it is based on a
vaguelydescribed"world-wide"repertory.14 Lullabies,accordingto Brakeley,say
in great part "go to sleep, motheris here, you are safe, everythingis all right.
The all rightnessof everythingmaybe elaboratedby a placid descriptionof what
the rest of the household is doing. Father has gone hunting, fishing, sheep-
tending .. ."15The peacefulnessof the surroundingsmaybe described;the safety
of the child may be guaranteedby "invokingsaints,angels, or guardianspirits";
and materialadmirationof the child or "a prophecyof his gloriousfuture"may
be expressed.Some lullabiesincludepromisesor bribesfor good behavior;con-
versely, "threats,from the playful to the hair-raising"may occur.There are also
some lullabies "complainingof the mother'slot, of the father'sabsence,neglect
or drunkenness."
Against this generalized"international"picture,I have aligned a repertoryof
those American"true"lullabies (as definedby theirlexicalcontent) thataremost
frequentlyreportedin some fifteenregionaland nationalcollectionsof American
folksongs, as well as in the two archivespreviouslymentioned, thus sampling
12 For a striking example of a
culturally contrastive attitude, see the German legend cited by
Karl Wehran, Kinderlied und Kinderspiel (Leipzig, 1909), 14. According to this chronicle, Kaiser
Friedrich II, for purposes of scientific research, allowed several children to be brought up in such
a way that they never heard any human speech or song, in order to determine which language they
themselves would choose to speak. The experiment failed to come to fruition, however; all the
children died in infancy before they could possibly speak, since none could fall asleep without a
lullaby.
13 The unfortunate number of "hunches" included in this paper are in part due to the syndrome
Alan Dundes describes in "Text, Texture and Context," Southern Folklore Quarterly, 28 (1964),
251-265. As Dundes points out, social scientists normally report context without noting the spe-
cific texts in use, while folklorists all too often report only the texts, without reference to the
contexts in which they occur.
14 Theresa C. Brakeley, "Lullaby," in Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Myth and Legend, ed.
Maria Leach, vol. 2 (New York, 1950), 653-654. Other sources on lullaby content, equally gen-
eralized and of varying degrees of usefulness, include: Heinrich Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch und
Sitte der Volker (Leipzig, 1884); Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, Essays in the Study of Folk
Songs (New York and London, 1886), 231-268; and Leslie Daiken, The Lullaby Book (London,
1959).
15 Brakeley, 653.

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146 BESSLOMAXHAWES
both ruraland urbanareas.The methodis sloppy but fair, I believe,considering
the definitionalproblems.Few people would challengeas uncharacteristicthe fol-
lowing list, which those
comprises lullabies
sleep-centered I have found to be the
mostfrequentlyreportedin the United States:
"RockabyeBaby"
"ByeBabyBunting"
"AllthePrettyLittleHorses"
sub-type:"PoorLittleLambCriesMammy"
sub-type:"GoTo Sleepy,LittleBaby"
"SleepBabySleep"
"Baby'sBoat'stheSilverMoon"
"Hush,LittleBaby,Don'tSayaWord"
The equallypopular"Brahms'Lullaby"has been excludedsince the large num-
ber of fragmentaryversions in the CSUN archivesindicatesthat by the time
singers get through the second line "with roses bedight" they have generally
given up on the wordsandstartedhumming.
All the above clearlyfit one or more of Brakeley'sdescriptions,except that
thereappearto be no expressionsof "maternaladmirationfor the child or predic-
tions of his glorious future"and no complaintsaboutthe mother'sconditionor
the father'smisbehavior.These themes are, it is true, representedin the overall
corpusof Americanlullabies,but theyoccurin less widelyknownsongsthanthose
cited above.The absenceof the two topicsin the "mostpopular"list maybe sig-
nificant,as they are the most emotionallydirect (the least "chatty")of all the
subjectsdetailedby Brakeley.
Two of the songs ("All the PrettyLittle Horses"and "Hush, Little Baby")
might be categorizedas containingbribesfor good behavior.Their promises,on
closerexamination,are simplepredictions:"Whenyou wake,you shall have ."
and "Papa'sgoing to buy you.. ." Again, the emotionalformulationis oblique,
ratherthan direct.These two songs also suggesta futureorientation,unlikemost
Americanlullabies,which are expressedin presenttense and filled with descrip-
tive termsaboutthe surroundingsand the activitiesof variouspeople.
And it is here thatwe reachthe single most characteristic qualityin the lexical
of
content sleep-centered American lullabies: the spatial isolation of the baby.All
the people around him in song are actually somewhere else-shaking dreamland
trees, gone hunting, out watchingsheep, or what have you. Baby,meanwhile,is
up in a tree, or sailing off in a boat made out of the moon, or drivingawaywith
his "prettylittle horses." When he does sleep, he is described as being in a place
called "dreamland"which, wherever it is, dearly isn't his own bed; and he is
variouslyrequestedor ordered to take himself to that "land of Nod" by the lin-
to
guistic conventionthat requiresEnglishspeakers "go sleep." to Even the most
widespreadchoiceof a lulling nonsensesyllable takes the form of a spatialmeta-
phor; "bye bye," after all, means both "sleep" and "farewell."
Here again, some of the data developed in the cross-cultural study mentioned
previously might be enlightening. Japanese and American mothers seem to spend
almost the same amount of time in caretaking activities when their babies are
awake. During the hours of sleep, however, the Japanese mother tends to con-

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FOLKSONG AND FUNCTION: THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN LULLABY 147
tinue her caretakingat a leisurelypace, and thus she scoreshigh in such factors
as rocking,carrying,andholding her sleepingbaby.The Americanmother,on the
otherhand, only scoreshigh in "lookingat" her sleepinginfant. This is because,
as the investigatorspoint out, she has ordinarilygone out of the room as soon as
(or before) the babyhas fallen asleep;she then returnsfromtimeto time to glance
throughthe doorat him.16
"When the boughbreaks,the cradlewill fall . Perhapsit is not too fanciful
to suggestthatthatmomentof high spatialdramathat .."
concludesthe mostpopular
of all English-languagelullabiessimplypresages,for the modernAmericanbaby,
the closing of the bedroomdoor. There are not manyothersocietiesin the world
besidesoursthathold to the belief that babiesshouldsleep alone.17
Now what is to be made of all this?In his groundbreakingessay,"FourFunc-
tions of Folklore,"18William Bascompointed out that one of the functionsof
traditionaloral expressionis to allow the individualto say what is otherwiseun-
sayablein his society, to releasehis feelings of hostility, tension, or anger in a
depersonalizedand thereforesanctionableway. In termsof this thesis, must we
then concludethat Americanmothersare reallyexpressinghostilitytowardtheir
infants when they chatawayat them all day aboutmiscellaneoustopicsand then
put them to bed to the cheerfulbut impersonallines of "SlewfootSue," or to a
lulling refrainthatactuallysuggeststhatthe babiesshouldgo off somewhereelse?
Maybe,but that'sonly one of the possibilities.There are, after all, two people
presentand in the "audience"when a lullabyis sung within context:the infant
and the mother. I do believe that the lullaby singer feels tensions and that the
songs she sings expressthose tensionswith a kind of exquisiteeconomy.But the
sourcemay be externalor internal;the lullabyingmothermay in fact be singing
as muchto herselfas to herbaby.
EdmundLeach,among others,has pointed out that one of the first problems
facing an infant is to discoverthe delimitsof his own body,to determinewhatis
himself and what is outside or separatefrom him.19I have wonderedwhether
the post-partummother does not face the same problemin reverse.Her infant,
after all, once a part of her own body, is now permanentlyand foreverseparate.
This experience,of course,is commonto mothersin all societies,but American
cultureputs whatis clearlyan abnormaldegreeof separationstrainon the mother.
On the one hand, she must trainher babyto be the active, exploratory,happily
vocalizing-in sum,independent-little characterthatour cultureprefers.On the
other hand, she must do this without assistancefrom anybodyelse becauseour
societyis most unique in its insistencethat mothers-and mothersalone-take
careof theirbabies.20 Thus, she mustsimultaneouslytryto separateher babyfrom
16 Caudill and
Weinstein, 38-39.
17 William N. The
Stephens, Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York, 1963), 360.
Also, see William Caudill and David W. Plath, "Who Sleeps by Whom ? Parent-Child Involvement
in Urban Japanese Families," Psychiatry, 29 (1966), 344-366.
18 William R.
Bascom, "FourFunctionsof Folklore,"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, 67
(1954), 333-349.
19 Edmund
Leach, "Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal
Abuse," in New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. Eric H. Lenneberg (Cambridge, Mass.,
1966), 23-63.
20 Stephens, 366-370. It will be
interesting to see if the lullaby repertory eventually reflects the
trend, currently observable in many young families, for the father to take on a greater proportion
of the caretaking activities, including putting the baby to sleep.

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148 BESSLOMAXHAWES

herself, makinghim independent,self-reliant,and strong (for in America,they

say, everytub standson its own bottom), while at the sametime she remainsin
maximumphysicalproximityto him.
No wonderAmericanmotherssing to theirbabies-and moreespecially,prob-
ably,to themselves-about separationand spaceandgoing veryfar away.I always
foundmyselfthatrockinga babyto sleepwaskindof a sadthingto do-not miser-
ableor tragicor irksome-just a little bit sad,somehow.
It was remarkedearlierthat in termsof child-training,Japaneseand American
mothers"seemto get what theyapparentlywant."Otherinvestigationshaveindi-
cated that this is profoundlytrue for cultureseverywhere;overall,a societytries
to producethe kind of individualsit needs for its own survival."But-as ex-
pressedin an ancientSpanishproverb-there is anotherculturallaw that seems
equallyuniversal:"Takewhat you want-but pay for it, saysGod."
The bill must be paid. If we want independentchildren,we must thrustthem
awayfrom us, and,equallyimportantly,we mustthrustourselvesawayfromthem.
The Americanlullabyis, I suggest-whether "chatty"or "lulling,"whetherthe
motherfindsherself singing "ByeBabyBunting"or "I Am Boundfor the Prom-
ised Land,"or even "CaseyJones"-on one of its deeperlevels, a mother'scon-
versationwith herself aboutseparation.And, as such,one of its most profoundly
supportivefunctionsis to makethe inevitableandinexorablepaymentof oursocial
duesjusta little less personallypainful.

CaliforniaStateUniversity
Northridge,California

21 HerbertBarry,Irvin L. Child, and MargaretK. Bacon, "Relationof Child Trainingto Sub-

sistenceEconomy,"AmericanAnthropologist,6i (1958), 51-63.

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