Cradle song

“ NURSERY AND CRADLE SONGS OF THE FOREST.
The tickenagun, or Indian cradle, is an object of great pride with an Indian mother. She gets the finest kind of broad cloth she possibly can to make an outer swathing band for it, and spares no pains in ornamenting it with beads and ribbons, worked in various figures. In the lodges of those who can afford it, there is no article more showy and pretty than the full bound cradle. The frame of the cradle itself is a curiosity. It consists of three pieces. ”

“ Sandy, me boy, git your nag an' a packhorse, an' streak fur Jago's as fast as yer can git, an' borry a cradle. It'd take too long ter pan this stuff—must have a cradle. But, look 'ere, don't give the show away. Tell 'im I got a few specks from a bit o' stuff I came acrost, an' that I'm jist goin' ter give it a try. He'll most likely call me a big fool, an' don't yer conterdict 'im."
A cradle, it may be said, is a machine on rockers for washing the auriferous earth. The machine is fed with the wash-dirt, a stream of water being poured on while it is rocked like a child's cradle. ”

“ It is said the "hand that rocks the cradle is the lever that moves the world." If this be true, then the Indian mother takes no part in the world's movement, for she never has rocked a cradle. The cradle of a child is an oak board two and one-half feet long, and one and one-half feet wide, to which the babe is strapped in a way that the arms and legs are free for exercise and growth. ”

“ There is silence everywhere, and appropriately there, where the four brick corners of the smoke-coloured Cradle rise from the hollow of Balgay Hill. They waited till the moon shone out again in her calm, breathless repose; and then resounded from the clanging black boards of the hearse a terrible din resembling thunder, and already each man, with his table-cover rolled round him, was snug behind the solemn head-stones, storied with domestic loves severed by the dark angel.
Now was the time for the trumpet-call, which behoved to be sounded by the cycloborean lungs of the broad-chested Panmure. ”

“ No grandmother, with all her experience, ever rocked a cradle more naturally or with more tranquilizing effect. While she rocks the cradle with her foot, with one hand she fans the infant sleeper, and with the other hand wipes her face with the handkerchief, and occasionally turns her head and views the situation with approval. ”

“ The cradle was made by a practical wag, known as Billy Bradley, who attended to it every Show Day. When there was a clean sheet of actual offenders, Bradley contented himself with “rocking” men who volunteered just for the fun of the thing. Finish was imparted to the performance by a fiddler, named Smith Keighley, playing “Rock’d in the cradle of the deep” during the operation. Many were the visitors who came to see the stirrings in this corner of the town. ”

“ During this period the cradle serves many purposes—as a mere nest for the helpless infant, as a bed so constructed and manipulated as to permit sleep in either a vertical or horizontal position, as a vehicle for carrying the child suspended on the mother's back or from the saddle-bow, as, indeed, a cradle to be hung on the limbs of trees to rock, as a playhouse and baby-jumper, and as a kind of training school whence the child emerges little by little till it leaves it altogether. ”

“ A cradle stood in the place which formerly the toilet-table had occupied--ah, what a cradle--a dream of a cradle! A basket with a canopy of green silk, hung with a long, transparent lace veil, a costly nest for a young bird whose little eyes must be shielded, by all kinds of tender devices, from the bright light, which perhaps later would pain him so! ”

“ The Indian child, in truth, takes its first lesson in the art of endurance, in the cradle. When it cries it need not be unbound to nurse it. If the mother be young, she must put it to sleep herself. If she have younger sisters or daughters they share this care with her. If the lodge be roomy and high, as lodges sometimes are, the cradle is suspended to the top poles [Pg 391] to be swung. If not, or the weather be fine, it is tied to the limb of a tree, with small cords made from the inner bark of the linden, and a vibratory motion given to it from head to foot by the mother or some attendant. ”

“ I didn't order but two rockers. I never ordered it that big. Do you think I'm a fool. I know what a cradle is."
"Well, you don't call that thing a cradle, do you?" inquired Aunt Tillie.
"Well, it's as near as you will get to one, people don't know nothing about babies or cradles in these days."
The cradle, with its three rockers and six sharp points and a big old fashioned rocking chair with four more pointed rockers, made the baby's room a storage place for ancient instruments of torture.
[534] The night was a wild one, winds without, colic within. Eddie knew the route to the paregoric. ”

“ For the beginning of the cradle is not the real beginning. That is only the end of the darkness of forebeing that is pierced with a woman's pang. That is still an uneasy slumber, yea, even though it weakly smile, and by and by stumble over its syllables, and stumble over its own uncertain feet, and walk, and spell, and use a tennis-racket. It is incomplete, and will never be complete in itself. ”

“ In the Douce Collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, there is figured in a manuscript of the fifteenth century a cradle, with the baby very nicely tucked up in it. The cradle resembles those of modern date, and is upon rockers. Another illustration of the same period shows us a cradle of similar form, the "cradle, baby, and all" carried on the head of the nursery-maid,—a caryatid style of baby-tending which we cannot suppose to have been universal. ”

“ Well, that little old cradle was sittin' way back in the garret on top o' the old oak bed-clothes chest that Grandmother Stearns packed her quilts in, when she moved from Connecticut and come to Ohio. And the young girl spied that cradle, and says she: 'Oh! What a darling cradle!' And then she stopped and blushed as red [Pg 105] as a rose, and the lady jest smiled and says: 'Would you sell me the little cradle, Miss Mayfield?' And I says: 'You may have it and welcome. ”

“ But the sordid purlieus of the little square rang with the spielers' solicitations, the hucksters' cries, the wild clatter of the merry-go-round, whizzing gaily to the music of the band,—every saddle was bestridden; every chariot was occupied with the philandering rural youth, who saw no incongruity in being obliged to shout soft nothings to each other amidst the grinding of the machinery, the blare of the band and the clamour of voices as loud as their own. The Flying Lady was a-wing in her tent, its outer aspect suggesting a great illuminated mushroom ”

“ Even the most ingenuous find a little cloying the humours and the harmonies of a Gaiety burlesque; they are like toffee and butterscotch, delicacies for which we cannot understand our youthful craving. Bertha had learnt something of music in lands where it is cultivated as a pleasure rather than as a duty, and the popular melodies with obvious refrains sent cold shivers down her back; but they stirred Craddock to the depths of his soul. ”

“ The wife of a chief or wealthy man will not, however, rest satisfied with the mere strip of skin by way of a cradle, but has one of an elaborate and ornamental character. The illustration represents a remarkably fine example of the South African cradle, and is drawn from a specimen in my collection.
It is nearly two feet in length by one in width, and is made of antelope skin, with the hair still remaining. The first care of the maker has been to construct a bag, narrow toward the bottom, gradually widening until within a few inches of the opening, when it again contracts. ”

“ Carlyle, too, has listened with delight to those merry songs of spring. “Then truly,” he says, “was the time of singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires, the wise and the simple, men, women, and children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in hearing it done. It was a universal noise of song, as if the spring of manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray—not, indeed, without infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music—were bidding it welcome.” ”

“ Once or twice a lad appeared on the top of the wall, looking over, but vanished at once when he saw Charley’s face at the window. Long ere the baker had finished, the song was caught up from outside, and before the last notes of the violin had died away, twenty voices were singing it in the street, and forty feet marched away with it into the dusk.
Darkness comes quickly in this land of brief twilight. Presently out of the soft shadowed stillness, broken by the note of a vagrant whippoorwill, crept out from Maximilian Cour’s old violin the music of ‘The Baffled Quest of Love’. ”

“ Nothing could be prettier than the old cradles that have survived successive years of use with many generations of babies. In Pilgrim Hall still may be seen the quaint and finely wrought wicker cradle of Peregrine White, the first white child born in Plymouth. This cradle is of Dutch manufacture ”

“ In less primitive parts of Sweden and Norway, however, and among the better-off, the pillow-bundle often gives place to352 a wooden cradle, shaped like a trough or a French baquet, which is usually suspended by a spiral spring from the roof. The elastic motion can scarcely be of the most delightful kind to baby we should think, for there is nothing to prevent the cradle from spinning or twisting round at its will, and so producing dizziness. ”

“ The cradle, so called from its general resemblance to that article of furniture, has two rockers, which move easily back and forth in two grooves of a frame, which is laid down firmly on the edge of or over the water, so that the person working it may at the same time dip up the water. ”

“ The musicians seated themselves in their chairs. There was a sudden rustling of paper as they turned over the pages of their music and the conductor nimbly mounted to his seat and caught up his baton. Persons from still another unknown underworld crowded to the wings and peeped out. The performance was about to begin, from the first.
It was on Dorat, Charlotte noticed, that every eye seemed bent. He, it appeared, was the one vital and controlling heart of all that involved machinery of song. It was at a curt nod from him that the baton moved and the music struck up. ”

“ The body of the cradle is made of the ever-useful itirritti reed, which is split into slips about the tenth of an inch in width, and then woven so as to make a kind of basket, open at one end and down one side. The edges are strengthened by a rod of flexible wood lashed firmly to them, and the cradle is brought into shape by means of a framework consisting of tolerably strong sticks. ”

“ The book was brought, Emily saved her sister the labour of tuning, and Charlotte, for the first time, saluted our ears with such divine [Pg 87] enchantment as quite baffles every attempt of mine to convey a sense of it to your imagination. Russell furnished a study to Mrs. Fitzroy, who was watching the variety of his emotion with the deepest interest. His account of Charlotte's music, perhaps, may give you the best idea of it that words can impart:—"it is not," he says, "earthly harmony. No mortal finger touches that harp; no human voice is uttered in the song ”

“ I can play on the drum. It is my one instrument."
"Does it require much practice?"
"Oh, yes; it is very difficult—to play well. But it has been very useful to me. I took a drum with me to South America. That is music that the natives can understand, it can make them afraid; and when one is all by oneself in the forest, then it helps that one shall not feel lonely. One night when I had no fire left, I was saved my life from wild beasts just by beating at them with my drum. It is funny that you should like drums."
"I like something with them as well," said Charlotte. ”

“ A cloud of dust was approaching in the distance, heralding a band of men. A new sound invoked the echoes. The breath was held to hear it. The throb of a drum—faint—far. And here thunderously beating, hard at hand, overpowering all lesser sounds, the drums of loco responded. To the vibrations of these sonorous earthen cylinders, the sticks plied with a will on the heads of wet deerskins tightly stretched, the ball-players of Niowee advanced. ”

“ The others sprang up in a body and rushed gayly at the light and agile drummer, still plying his sticks on every cranium that came within his reach, whisking among them, darting from one to another, slipping under their out-stretched arms and setting many a head to ringing with a tune all its own, till finally he was surrounded, collared, caught up bodily and fairly flung outside in the deepest drift near at hand. ”

“ The cradle is usually deposited in some safe corner, and the baby is left [pg 547] to sleep or amuse itself with its infantine thoughts. The cradle is sometimes attached to two ropes to form a swing, and when the mother becomes conscious of the child's awakening she uncovers its head at times and the tiny thing casts its eyes around. ”

“ Thumbelina in her Cradle, Thumbelina and the Toad, Thumbelina and the Swallow and Thumbelina as Queen of the Flowers—these at once suggest a cradle rhythm, a toad rhythm, the flight of birds, and a butterfly dance. Because the rhythm is a lyric form it must be remembered that the part of a story suited to a rhythm play is always a part characterized by a distinct emotional element. In the performance of rhythm plays the point is to secure the adjustment of music, motion, and idea. ”

“ Charlotte went to the piano and banged out a two-step march that was the raging popular tune of the day.
"Ah, that is the stunt! Now, if you will play some music," ventured Von Barwig, "I can just tell you where you are."
"Isn't that music?" asked Charlotte.
"It is rhythm and jingle—a stunt as you call it. Real musicians do not write such things."
"Isn't there a method of learning how to play without practising?" broke in Octavie.
"From nothing comes nothing," said Von Barwig with a sigh.
"Quite true," assented Mrs. Cruger. ”