In The Town Where I Was Born...

[poliphilo]

I don't sing. Or maybe that should read I can't sing. Or even I shouldn't sing. I am wholly unmusical. I can't hold a tune. And in the normal course of things I don't even try

But faced with a baby I do.

First I sing nursery rhymes. I find I know the words of ever so many.

Then drinking songs like One Man went to Mow.

Then I move on to Yellow Submarine

And from there I access my cache of music hall numbers- Daisy Daisy, I'm 'Enery the 8th I Am, The Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Chaplin.

Finally I launch into the Battle Hymn of the American Republic and variations thereon- including the old RAF version with the verse that goes, "He jumped without a parachute from thirty thousand feet....(repeat three times)... And he ain't gonna jump no more".

The baby seems to like it. 

I believe my mother is responsible. She used to sing to me when I was tiny. All sorts. Including Daisy Daisy. And- my favourite- The Skye Boat Song. That's the one she used to put me to sleep with. Such a sad song. A lament for Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie. I'd sing it too if I knew the words.

Comments

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

In addition to folk-song lullabies like "Pretty Horses", I also sang some nursery rhymes.
I had a problem with baby talk. Since I did not have any idea of how to address a baby when I had my firstborn, I took to reciting nursery rhymes to her while I held her in my arms or on my lap. She seemed to enjoy this from a very early age. Later on I read to her from AA Milne's "When We Were Very Young" and "Now We are Six", as well as some of Edward Lear's nonsense poems, and of course Joel Chandler Harris's "Tar Baby" (in dialect). This worked so well with the eldest, that I did it with the others, and all of them have had a love for reading all their lives. Myown grandmother who lived with us, and my mother and Dad read to me, taught me nursery rhymes, and sang to me for as far back as I can remember. I guess I just passed it on.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about baby talk. I don't really see the point of teaching a child a whole bunch of baby words that he or she is going to have to unlearn later. Much better to plug them straight into the folk tradition by singing nursery rhymes and such- and the literary tradition by reading them good books.

Milne, Lear, Harris- that's a very nutricious diet.