The form taken by parental flattery shows the tastes of nations and of individuals. The other day a young and successful English artist was heard to exclaim with profound conviction, whilst contemplating his son and heir, twenty-four hours old, "There is a great deal of tone about that baby!"

The Hungarian nurse tells her charge that his cot must be of rosewood and his swaddling clothes of rainbow threads spun by angels. The evening breeze is to rock him, the kiss of the falling star to awake him; she would have the breath of the lily touch him gently, and the butterflies fan him with their brilliant wings. Like the Sicilian, the Magyar has an innate love of splendour.

Corsica has a ninna-nanna into which the whole genius of its people seems to have passed. The village, fÊtes, with dancing and music, the flocks and herds and sheep-dogs, even the mountains, stars, and sea, and the perfumed air off the macchi, come back to the traveller in that island as he reads—

At the sight of a new-born babe the Corsican involuntarily sets to work making auguries. The mountain shepherds place great faith in divination based on the examination of the shoulder-blades of animals: according to the local tradition the famous prophecy of the greatness of Napoleon was drawn up after this method. The nomad tribes of Central Asia search the future in precisely the same way. Corsican lullabies are often prophetical. An old woman predicts a strange sort of millennium, to begin with the coming of age of her grandson:

An unexpected yet logical development leads from the peaceful household cares, the joyous images of the familiar song, the playful picture of the baby boy in jacket and pointed hat, to a terrible recollection of deeds of shame and blood, long past, and perhaps half-forgotten by the rest of the family, but at which the old dame's breast still burns as she rocks the sleeping babe on whom is fixed her last passionate hope of vengeance fulfilled.

In the mountain villages scattered about the borders of the vast Sila forest, Calabrian mothers whisper to their babes, "brigantiellu miu, brigantiellu della mamma." They tell the little ones gathered round their knees legends of Fra Diavolo and of Talarico, just as Sardinian mothers tell the legend of Tolu of Florinas. This last is a story of to-day. In 1850, Giovanni Tolu married the niece of the priest's housekeeper. The priest opposed the marriage, and soon after it had taken place, in the absence of Tolu, he persuaded the young wife to leave her husband's house, never to return. Tolu, meeting his enemy in a lonely path, fired his pistol, but by some accident it did not go off, and the priest escaped with his life. Arrest and certain conviction, however, awaited Tolu, who preferred to take to the woods, where he remained for thirty years, a prince among outlaws. He protected the weak; administered a rude but wise justice to the scattered peasants of the waste country between Sassari and the sea; his swift horse was always ready to fly in search of their lost or stolen cattle; his gun was the terror of the thieves who preyed upon these poor people. In Osilo lived two families, hereditary foes, the Stacca and the Achena. An Achena offered Tolu five hundred francs to kill the head of the Stacca family. Tolu not only refused, he did not rest till he had brought about a reconciliation between the two houses. At last, in the autumn of 1880, the gendarmes, after thirty years' failure, arrested Tolu without a struggle at a place where he had gone to take part in a country festa. For two years he was kept untried in prison. In September 1882 he was brought before the Court of Assize at Frosinone. Not a witness could be found to testify against him. "Tolu," they said, "È un Dio." When asked by the President what he had to say in his defence, he replied: "I never fired first. The carabineers hunted me like a wild beast, because a price was set on my head, and like a wild beast I defended myself." The jury brought in a verdict of acquittal; and if any one wishes to make our hero's acquaintance, he has only to take ship for Sardinia and then find the way to the village of Florinas, where he is now peaceably living, beloved and respected by all who know him.

The Sardinian character has old-world virtues and old-world blemishes; if you live in the wilder districts you may deem it advisable to keep a loaded pistol on the table at meal-time; but then you may go all over the island without letters of introduction, sure of a hearty welcome, and an hospitality which gives to the stranger the best of everything that there is. If the Sardinian has an imperfect apprehension of the sacredness of other laws, he is blindly obedient to that of custom; when some progressive measure is proposed, he does not argue—he says quietly: "Custu non est secundu la moda nostra." No man sweeps the dust on antique time less than he. One of his distinctive traits is an overweening fondness of his children; the ever-marvellous baby is represented not only as the glory of its mother, but also as the light even of its most distant connexions—

On the northern shore the people speak a tongue akin to that of the neighbouring isle, and the dialect of the south is semi-Spanish; but in the midland Logudoro the old Sard speech is spoken much as it is known to have been spoken a thousand years ago. It is simply a rustic Latin. Canon Spano's loving rather than critical labours have left Sardinia a fine field for some future folk-lore collector. The Sardinian is short in speech, copious in song. I asked a lad, just returned to Venetia from working in Sardinian quarries, if the people there had many songs? "Oh! tanti!" he answered, with a gesture more expressive than the words. He had brought back more than a touch of that malarious fever which is the scourge of the island and a blight upon all efforts to develop its rich resources. A Sardinian friend tells me that the Sard poet often shows a complete contempt for metrical rules; his poesy is apt to become a rhythmic chant of which the words and music cannot be dissevered. But the Logudorian lullabies are regular in form, their distinguishing feature being an interjection with an almost classical ring that replaces the fa la nanna of Italy—

The singer is the little mother-sister: the child who, while the mother works in the fields or goes to market, is left in charge of the last-come member of the family, and is bound to console it as best she may, for the absence of its natural guardian. The baby is to her somewhat of a doll, just as to the children of the rich the doll is somewhat of a baby. She may be met without going far afield; anyone who has lived near an English village must know the curly-headed little girl who sits on the cottage door-step or among the meadow buttercups, her arms stretched at full length, round a soft, black-eyed creature, small indeed, yet not much smaller than herself. This, she solemnly informs you, is her baby. Not quite so often can she be seen now as before the passing of the Education Act, prior to which all truants fell back on the triumphant excuse, "I can't go to school because I have to mind my baby," some neighbouring infant brother, cousin, nephew, being producible at a moment's notice in support of the assertion. In those days the mere sight of a baby filled persons interested in the promotion of public instruction with wrath and suspicion. Yet womanhood would lose a sweet and sympathetic phase were the little mother-sister to wholly disappear. The songs of the child-nurse are of the slenderest kind; the tether of her imagination has not been cut by hope or memory. As a rule she dwells upon the important fact that mother will soon be here, and when she has said that, she has not much more to say. So it is in an Istriot song: "This is a child who is always crying; be quiet, my soul, for mother is coming back; she will bring thee nice milk, and then she will put thee in the crib to hushaby." A Tuscan correspondent sends me a sister-rhyme which is introduced by a pretty description of the grave-eyed little maiden, of twelve or thirteen years perhaps, responsible almost to sadness, who leans down her face over the baby brother she is rocking in the cradle; and when he stirs and begins to cry, sings softly the oft-told tale of how the dear mamma will come quickly and press him lovingly to her breast:

The little French girl turns her thoughts to the hot milk and chocolate that are being prepared, and of which she no doubt expects to have a share:—

In enumerating the rewards for infantine virtue—which is sleep—I must not forget the celebrated hare's skin to be presented to Baby Bunting, and the "little fishy" that the English father, set to be nurse ad interim, promises his "babby" when the ship comes in; nor should I pass over the hopes raised in an inedited cradle song of French Flanders, which opens, like the Tuscan lullaby, with a short narration:

In this barbarous patios, the poor lace-maker tells her "p'tit pocchin" (little chick) that to-morrow he shall have a cake made of honey, spices, and rye flour; that he shall be dressed in his best clothes "com' un bieau milord;" and that at "la Ducasse," a local fÊte, she will buy him a laughable Polchinello and a bird-organ playing the tune of the sugar-loaf hat. Toys are also promised in a Japanese lullaby, which the kindness of the late author of "Child-life in Japan" has enabled me to give in the original:

Signifying in English:

Scope is allowed for unlimited extension, as the singer can go on mentioning any number of toys. The Daruma is what English children call a tumbler; a figure weighted at the bottom, so that turn it how you will, it always regains its equilibrium.

More ethereal delights than chocolate, hare's skins, bird-organs, or even paper dogs (though these last sound irresistibly seductive), form the subject of a beautiful little Greek song of consolation: "Lullaby, lullaby, thy mother is coming back from the laurels by the river, from the sweet banks she will bring thee flowers; all sorts of flowers, roses, and scented pinks." When she does come back, the Greek mother makes such promises as eclipse all the rest: "Sleep, my child, and I will give thee Alexandria for thy sugar, Cairo for thy rice, and Constantinople, there to reign three years!" Those who see deep meaning in childish things will look with interest at the young Greek woman, who sits vaguely dreaming of empire while she rocks her babe. The song is particularly popular in Cyprus; the English residents there must be familiar with the melody—an air constructed on the Oriental scale, and only the other day set on paper. The few bars of music are like a sigh of passionate longing.

From reward to punishment is but a step, and next in order to the songs that refer to the recompense of good, sleepy children, must be placed those hinting at the serious consequences which will be the result of unyielding wakefulness. It must be confessed that retribution does not always assume a very awful form; in fact, in one German rhyme, it comes under so gracious a disguise, that a child might almost lie awake on purpose to look out for it:

The translation is by "Hans Breitmann."

In the threatening style of lullaby, the bogey plays a considerable part. A history of the bogeys of all nations would be an instructive book. The hero of one people is the bogey of another. Wellington and Napoleon (or rather "Boney") served to scare naughty babies long after the latter, at least, was laid to rest. French children still have songs about "le Prince Noir," and the nurses sang during the siege of Paris:

The Moor is the nursery terror of many parts of Southern Europe; not, however, it would seem of Sicily—a possible tribute to the enlightened rule of the Kalifs. The Greeks do not enjoy a like immunity: Signor Avolio mentions, in his "Canti popolari di Noto," that besides saying "the wolf is coming," it is common for mothers to frighten their little ones with, "ZÌttiti, ca viÈnunu i Riece; Nu sciri ca 'ncianu ci sÙ i Rieci" ("Hush, for the Greeks are coming: don't go outside for the Greeks are there.") Noto was the centre of the district where the ancient Sikeli made their last stand against Greek supremacy: a coincidence that opens the way to bold speculation, though the originals of the bogey Greeks may have been only pirates of times far less remote.

In Germany the same person distributes rewards and punishments: St Nicholas in the Rhenish provinces, Knecht Ruprecht in Northern and Central Germany, Julklapp in Pomerania. On Christmas eve, some one cries out "Julklapp!" from behind a door, and throws the gift into the room with the child's name pinned upon it. Even the gentle St Lucy, the Santa Claus of Lombardy, withholds her cakes from erring babes, and little Tuscans stand a good deal in awe of their friend the Befana; delightful as are the treasures she puts in their shoes when satisfied with their behaviour, she is credited with an unpleasantly sharp eye for youthful transgressions. She has a relative in Japan of the name of Hotii. Once upon a time Hotii, who belongs to the sterner sex, lived on earth in the garb of a priest. His birthland was China, and he had the happy fame of being extremely kind to children. At present he walks about Japan with a big sack full of good things for young people, but the eyes with which the back of his head is furnished, enable him to see in a second if any child misconducts itself. Of more dubious antecedents is another patron of the children of Japan, Kishi Mojin, the mother of the child-demons. Once Kishi Mojin had the depraved habit of stealing any young child she could lay hands on and eating it. In spite of this, she was sincerely attached to her own family, which numbered one thousand, and when the exalted Amida Niorai hid one of its members to punish her for her cruel practices, she grieved bitterly. Finally the child was given back on condition that Kishi Mojin would never more devour her neighbours' infants: she was advised to eat the fruit of the pomegranate whenever she had a craving for unnatural food. Apparently she took the advice and kept the compact, as she is honoured on the 28th day of every month, and little children are taught to solicit her protection. The kindness shown to children both in Japan and China is well known; in China one baby is said to be of more service in insuring a safe journey than an armed escort.

"El coco," a Spanish bogey, figures in a sleep-song from Malaga: "Sleep, little child, sleep, my soul; sleep, little star of the morning. My child sleeps with eyes open like the hares. Little baby girl, who has beaten thee that thine eyes look as if they had been crying? Poor little girl! who has made thy face red? The rose on the rose-tree is going to sleep, and to sleep goes my child, for already it is late. Sleep little daughter for the coco comes."

The folk-poet in Spain reaps the advantage of a recognised freedom of versification; with the great stress laid upon the vowels, a consonant more or less counts for nothing:

All folk-poets, and notably the English, have recourse to an occasional assonant, but the Spaniard can trust altogether to such. Verse-making is thus made easy, provided ideas do not fail, and up to to-day, they have not failed the Spanish peasant. He has not, like the Italian, begun to leave off composing songs. My correspondent at Malaga writes that at that place improvisation seems innate in the people: they go before a house and sing the commonest thing they wish to express. Love and hate they also turn into songs, to be rehearsed under the window of the individual loved or hated. There is even an old woman now living in Malaga who rhymes in Latin with extraordinary facility. To the present section falls one other lullaby—coo-aby, perhaps I ought to say, since the Spanish arrullo means the cooing of doves as well as the lulling of children. It is quoted by Count Gubernatis:

"The Moor" is in this instance a benignant kind of bogey, not far removed from harmless "wee Willie Winkie" who runs upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown:

These myths have some analogy with a being known as "La Dormette" who frequents the neighbourhood of Poitou. She is a good old woman who throws sand and sleep on children's eyes, and is hailed with the words:

Now and then we hear of an angel who passes by at nightfall; it is not clear what may be his mission, but he is plainly too much occupied to linger with his fellow seraphs, who have nothing to do but to kiss the babe in its sleep. A little French song speaks of this journeying angel:

In Calabria, when a butterfly flits around a baby's cradle, it is believed to be either an angel or a baby's soul.

The pendulum of good and evil is set swinging from the moment that the infant draws its first breath. Angelical visitation has its complement in demonial influence; it is even difficult to resist the conclusion that the ministers of light are frequently outnumbered by the powers of darkness. In most Christian lands the unbaptised child is given over entirely to the latter. Sicilian women are loth to kiss a child before its christening, because they consider it a pagan or a Turk. In East Tyrol and Styria, persons who take a child to be baptised say on their return—"A Jew we took away, a Christian we bring back." Some Tyrolese mothers will not give any food to their babies till the rite has been performed. The unbaptised Greek is thought to be simply a small demon, and is called by no other designation than s?a??? if a boy, and s?a?Õ??a if a girl. Once when a christening was unavoidably delayed, the parents got so accustomed to calling their little girl by the snake name, that they continued doing so even after she had been presented with one less equivocal. Dead unchristened babes float about on the wind; in Tyrol they are marshalled along by Berchte, the wife of Pontius Pilate; in Scotland they may be heard moaning on calm nights. The state to which their baby souls are relegated, is probably a lingering recollection of that into which, in pagan days, all innocent spirits were conceived to pass: an explanation that has also the merit of being as little offensive as any that can be offered. There is naturally a general wish to make baptism follow as soon as possible after birth—an end that is sometimes pursued regardless of the bodily risks it may involve. A poor woman gave birth to a child at the mines of Vallauria; it was a bitterly cold winter; the snow lay deep enough to efface the mountain tracks, and all moisture froze the instant it was exposed to the air. However, the grandmother of the new-born babe carried it off immediately to Tenda—many miles away—for the christening rite. As she had been heard to remark that it was a useless encumbrance, there were some who attributed her action to other motives than religious zeal; but the child survived the ordeal and prospered. In several parts of the Swiss mountains a baptism, like a funeral, is an event for the whole community. I was present at a christening in a small village lying near the summit of the Julier Pass. The bare, little church was crowded, and the service was performed with a reverent carefulness contrasting sharply with the mechanical and hurried performance of a baptism witnessed shortly before in a very different place, the glorious baptistry at Florence. It ended with a Lutheran hymn, sung sweetly without accompaniment, by five or six young girls. More than half of the congregation consisted of men, whose weather-tried faces were wet with tears, almost without exception. I could not find out that there was anything particularly sad in the circumstances of the case; the women certainly wore black, but then, the rule of attending the funerals even of mere acquaintances, causes the best dress in Switzerland to be always one suggestive of mourning. It seemed that the pathos of the dedication of a dawning life to the Supreme Good was sufficient to touch the hearts of these simple folk, starved from coarser emotion.

In Calabria it is thought unlucky to be either born or christened on a Friday. Saturday is likewise esteemed an inauspicious day, which points to its association with the witches' Sabbath, once the subject of numerous superstitious beliefs throughout the southern provinces of Italy. Not far from the battlefield near Benevento where Charles of Anjou defeated Manfred, grew a walnut tree, which had an almost European fame as the scene of Sabbatical orgies. People used to hang upon its branches the figure of a two-headed viper coiled into a ring, a symbol of incalculable antiquity. St Barbatus had the tree cut down, but the devil raised new shoots from the root and so it was renewed. Shreds of snake-worship may be still collected. The Calabrians hold that the cast-off skin of a snake is an excellent thing to put under the pillow of a sick baby. Even after their christening, children are unfortunately most susceptible to enchantment. When a beautiful and healthy child sickens and dies, the Irish peasant infers that the genuine baby has been stolen by fairies, and this miserable sprite left in its place. Two ancient antidotes have great power to counteract the effect of spells. One is the purifying Fire. In Scotland, as in Italy, bewitched children, within the memory of living men, have been set to rights by contact with its salutary heat. My relative, Count Belli of Viterbo, was "looked at" when an infant by a Jettatrice, and was in consequence put by his nurse into a mild oven for half-an-hour. One would think that the remedy was nearly as perilous as the practice of the lake-dwellers of cutting a little hole in their children's heads to let out the evil spirits, but in the case mentioned it seems to have answered well.

The other important curative agent is the purifying spittle. In Scotland and in Greece, any one who should exclaim, "What a beautiful child!" is expected to slightly spit upon the object of the remark, or some misfortune will follow. Ladies in a high position at Athens have been observed to do this quite lately. The Scotch and Greek uneasiness about the "well-faured" is by no means confined to those peoples; the same anxiety reappears in Madagascar; and the Arab does not like you to praise the beauty of his horse without adding the qualifying "an it please God." Persius gives an account of the precautions adopted by the friends of the infant Roman: "Look here—a grandmother or superstitious aunt has taken baby from his cradle and is charming his forehead and his slavering lips against mischief by the joint action of her middle finger and her purifying spittle; for she knows right well how to check the evil eye. Then she dandles him in her arms, and packs off the little pinched hope of the family, so far as wishing can do it, to the domains of Licinus, or to the palace of Croesus. 'May he be a catch for my lord and lady's daughter! May the pretty ladies scramble for him! May the ground he walks on turn to a rose-bed.'" (Prof. Conington's translation.)

One of the rare lullabies that contain allusion to enchantment is the following Roumanian "Nani-nani":

The last lines might be taken for a paraphrase of—

The Three Fates have still their cult at Athens. When a child is three days old, the mother places by its cot a little table spread with a clean linen cloth, upon which she sets a pot of honey, sundry cakes and fruits, her wedding ring, and a few pieces of money belonging to her husband. In the honey are stuck three almonds. These are the preparations for the visit of the ????a?. In some places the Norns or ParcÆ have got transformed into the three Maries; in others they closely retain their original character. A perfect sample of the mixing up of pagan and Christian lore is to be found in a Bulgarian legend, which shows the three Fates weaving the destiny of the infant Saviour during a momentary absence of the Virgin—the whole scene occurring in the middle of a Balkan wood. In Sicily exists a belief in certain strange ladies ("donni-di-fora"), who take charge of the new-born babe, with or without permission. The Palermitan mother says aloud, when she lifts her child out of the cradle, "'Nnome di Dio!" ("In God's name!")—but she quickly adds sotto voce: "Cu licenzi, signuri miu!" ("By your leave, ladies").

At Noto, Ronni-di-casa, or house-women, take the place of the Donni-di-fora. They inhabit every house in which a fire burns. If offended by their host, they revenge themselves on the children: the mother finds the infant whom she left asleep and tucked into the cradle, rolling on the floor or screaming with sudden fright. When, however, the Ronni-di-casa are amiably disposed, they make the sleeping child smile, after the fashion of angels in other parts of the world. Should they wish to leave an unmistakable mark of their good will, they twist a lock of the baby's hair into an inextricable tress. In England, elves were supposed to tangle the hair during sleep (vide King Lear: "Elf all my hair in knots;" and Mercutio's Mab speech). The favour of the Sicilian house-women is not without its drawbacks, for if by any mischance the knotted lock be cut off, they will probably twist the child's spine out of spite. "'Ccussi lu lassurii li Ronni-di-casa," says an inhabitant of Noto when he points out to you a child suffering from spinal curvature. The voice is lowered in mentioning these questionable guests, and there are Noticiani who will use any amount of circumlocution to avoid actually naming them. They are often called "certi signuri," as in this characteristic lullaby:

At Palermo, mothers dazzled their little girls with the prospect of entering the convent of Santa Zita or Santa Chiara. In announcing the birth of his child, a Sicilian peasant commonly says, "My wife has a daughter-abbess." "What! has your wife a daughter old enough to be an abbess?" has sometimes been the innocent rejoinder of a traveller from the mainland. The Convent of the Saviour, which is the destination of the paragon of beauty described in the above lullaby, was one of the wealthiest, and what is still more to the point, one of the most aristocratic religious houses in the island. To have a relation among its members was a distinction ardently coveted by the citizens of Noto; a town which once rejoiced in thirty-three noble families, one loftier than the other. The number is now cut down, but according to Signor Avolio such as remain are regarded with undiminished reverence. There are households in which the whole conversation runs on the Barone and Baronessa, when not absorbed by the Baronello and the Baronessella. It is just possible that the same phenomenon might be observed without going to Noto. Tutto il mondo È paese: a proverb which would serve as an excellent motto for the Folk-lore Society.

Outside Sicily the cradle-singer's ideal of felicity is rather matrimonial than monastic. The Venetian is convinced that who never loved before must succumb to her daughter's incomparable charms. It seems, by-the-by, that the "fatal gift" can be praised without fear or scruple in modern Italy; the visitors of a new-born babe ejaculate in a chorus, "Quant' È bellino! O bimbo! Bimbino!" and Italian lullabies, far more than any others, are one long catalogue of perfections, one drawn-out reiteration of the boast of a Greek mother of Terra d'Otranto: "There are children in the street, but like my boy there is not one; there are children before the house, but like my child there are none at all." The Sardinian who wishes to say something civil of a baby will not do less than predict that "his fame will go round the world." The cradle-singer of the Basilicata desires for her nursling that he may outstrip the sun and moon in their race. It has been seen that the Roumanian mother would have her son emulate the famous hero of Moldavia; for her daughter she cherishes a gentler ambition:

This nani-nani calls to mind some words in a letter of Sydney Dobell's: "A little girl-child! The very idea is the most exquisite of poems! a child-daughter—wherein it seems to me that the spirit of all dews and flowers and springs and tender, sweet wonders 'strikes its being into bounds.'" "Tear drop" (lacrimiÒra) is the poetic Roumanian name for the lily of the valley. It may be needful to add that gilliflower is the English name for the clove-pink; at least an explanatory foot-note is now attached to the word in new editions of the old poets. Exiled from the polite society of "bedding plants"—all heads and no bodies—the "matted and clove gilliflowers" which Bacon wished to have in his garden, must be sought for by the door of the cottager who speaks of them fondly yet apologetically, as "old-fashioned things." To the folk-singers of the small Italy on the Danube and the great Italy on the Arno they are still the type of the choicest excellence, of the most healthful grace. Even the long stalk, which has been the flower's undoing, from a worldly point of view, gets praised by the unsophisticated Tuscan. "See," he says, "with how lordly an air it holds itself in the hand!" ("Guarda con quanta signoria si tiene in mano!")

The anguish of the Hindu dying childless has its root deeper down in the human heart than the reason he gives for it, the foolish fear lest his funeral rites be not properly performed. No man quite knows what it is to die who leaves a child in the world; children are more than a link with the future—they are the future: the portion of ourselves that belongs not to this day but to to-morrow. To them may be transferred all the hopes sadly laid by, in our own case, as illusions; the "to be" of their young lives can be turned into a beautiful "arrangement in pink," even though experience has taught us that the common lot of humanity is "an Imbroglio in Whity-brown." Most parents do all this and much more; as lullabies would show were there any need for the showing of it. One cradle-song, however, faces the truth that of all sure things the surest is that sorrow and disappointment will fall upon the children as it has fallen upon the fathers. The song comes from Germany; the English version is by Mr C. G. Leland:

The sad truth is there, but with what tenderness is it not hedged about! These Teutonic angels are worth more than the too sensitive little angels of Spain who fly away at the sight of tears. And the last verse conveys a second truth, as consoling as the first is sad; pass what must, change what may, the mother's love will not change or pass; its healing presence will remain till death; who knows? perhaps after. Signor Salomone-Marino records the cry of one, who out of the depths blesses the haven of maternal love:

The soul that directs and inspires, the refuge that shelters, the column that supports, the garland that crowns—such language would not be natural in the mouth of an English labourer. An Englishman who feels deeply is almost bound to hold his tongue; but the poor Sicilian can so express himself in perfect naturalness and simplicity.

There is a kind of sleep-song that has only the form in common with the rose-coloured fiction that makes the bulk of cradle literature. It is the song of the mother who lulls her child with the overflow of her own troubled heart. The child may be the very cause of her sorest perplexity: yet from it alone she gains the courage to live, from it alone she learns a lesson of duty:

A Corsican mother says to the infant at her breast, "Thou art my guardian angel!"—which is the same thought spoken in another way.

The most lovely of all sad lullabies is that written much more than two thousand years ago by Simonides of Ceos. Acrisius, king of Argos, was informed by an oracle that he would be killed by the son of his daughter DanaË, who was therefore shut up in a tower, where Zeus visited her in the form of a shower of gold. Afterwards, when she gave birth to Perseus, Acrisius ordered mother and child to be exposed in a wicker chest or coffin on the open sea. This is the story which Simonides took as the subject of his poem:

Whilst the wind blew and rattled on the decorated ark, and the troubled deep tossed as though in terror—her own fair cheek also not unwet—around Perseus DanaË threw her arms, and cried: "O how grievous, my child, is my trouble; yet thou sleepest, and with tranquil heart slumberest within this joyless house, beneath the brazen-barred, black-gleaming, musky heavens. Ah! little reckest thou, beloved object, of the howling of the tempest, nor of the brine wetting thy delicate hair, as there thou liest, clad in thy little crimson mantle! But even were this dire pass dreadful also to thee, yet lend thy soft ear to my words: Sleep on, my babe, I say; sleep on, I charge thee; nay, let the wild waters sleep, and sleep the immeasurable woe. Let me, too, see some change of will on thy part, Zeus, father! or if the speech be deemed too venturous, then, for thy child's sake, I pray thee pardon."

This is not a folk-song, but it has a prescriptive right to a place among lullabies.

Passing over the beautiful Widow's Song, quoted in a former essay, we come to some Basque lines, which bring before us the blank and vulgar ugliness of modern misery with a realism that would please M. Zola:

Hush, poor child, hush thee to sleep;

(See him lying in slumber deep!)

Thou first, then following I,

We will hush and hushaby.