A mass of cells turns into an embryo, which turns into a fetus, which turns into a baby. This astounding sequence of events, this relentless biological imperative, with its stunningly predictable outcome, has been accomplished under the same sonic conditions for all of human history: the sound of the mother’s beating heart.
Our cells and our very being are formed to rhythm. Fetal development unfolds to a multilayered soundtrack: the steady surge of the mother’s bloodstream, the gurgle of her digestive tract, the sound of her voice through the amniotic ocean, and, at the center, the all-pervasive beat. The beat defines us. Indeed, one reason birth may be so traumatic to a baby (on a lifetime trauma scale of one to ten, it scores a nine, according to more than one obstetrician) is that the sound of the mother’s heartbeat disappears. The baby is expelled into a new, harsh aural world, unmuffled and raw, at whose center gapes an immensely empty sonic space.
The human heart beats sixty to eighty times a minute, at rest or during normal activity. Virtually all lullabies are composed within its rhythmic range, as if to replicate the experience of the womb. Particularly in the early months of life, a lullaby is intended to soothe, to heal and mend, to induce sleep, to reassure the baby that the mother (or a satisfactory replacement) is still there, still connected, if not by body, then by proximity and spirit. The tone and tempo of the songs return to the roots of the baby’s sentience. Many mothers sing lullabies to their unborn babies, instinctively knowing, perhaps, what science recently has proved: that a neonate can remember songs and melodies, pick out her mother’s voice from among other female voices, move to the beat, and even continue to mark it when the music stops.
Every culture has songs to wind down with at the end of the day, to help make the transition from work to rest, while walking home across the fields or when gathered around the fire before a meal. Every society has songs to soothe its infants as well. One of the first recorded references to lullabies is in the mid-sixteenth century, by the English writer Richardes: “When my maistrisse lay in and we Sange lulley by baby and bore ye.” A little later Shakespeare mentions “. . .a Nurses Song of Lullabie, to bring her babe asleep.” Lullabies certainly existed long before these notations. Somewhere early in human history, the impulse to comfort and calm the baby gave birth to spontaneous coos and lulling melodies and extemporaneous refrains. Eventually, some of these were structured as songs and documented. But unlike other formalized songs, the creative impulse in the lullaby began with the immediate and present need to soothe the baby into sleep.
Yet a lullaby is sung as much for the mother as for the child. At the end of a long day, when exhaustion, frazzled nerves, and the dreadful feelings of inadequacy for the all-consuming task of nurturing a helpless human being threaten to shatter the mother’s confidence, the moment arrives for the healing ritual of music. A song between mother and baby can mend both the fragile infant ego and the shaken adult one, restore the frayed edges of the bond, and provide a clean slate for the morrow. As a line in the Celtic lullaby “John O’Dreams” puts it, “all things are equal when the day is done.”
The nursing mother offering a lullaby to her baby is one of our most powerful and beautiful archetypes. More than the soothing of the mother and baby are essential to the lullaby; so is the mother’s need to find expression for her sense of loss, fear, and doubt. These emotions are the subtext of many lullabies and, in fact, reflect the subplot of giving birth and raising a child. The mother has lost the baby from her body, where they were literally one, and along with the obvious joy of birth, a pronounced sadness comes over many women, which may be assigned to postpartem depression. The loss is real and profound, and it soon dawns on the mother that everyday with her newborn builds on the original loss, as every day the child moves toward autonomy, away from her and into his own life. How passionately some mothers love the symbiosis and sweet dependency! Time is very cruel, and the mother must prepare herself, as she must prepare her child, for a future where she is no longer needed. The temporal nature of infancy is ineffably sad, and the mother’s intimations of the future need a balm, as well as a vehicle of expression. They find both in the lullabies, particularly those from traditions where there is less fear of immersing oneself in the discomfort of these ancient and inevitable sentiments.
Melancholy, longing, and even grief are inherent in lullabies, particularly in the Celtic and Middle Eastern traditions. In one Scottish lullaby, “Hush Ye, My Bairnie,” a mother resigns herself to the baby’s fate; he will lose his life on a Highland cattle raid, just like his father: Hush ye, my bairnie/ Bonny wee laddie/ When you’re a man/ You shall follow your daddy. Although the nineteenth century poet A.P. Graves said that “The Celts have no lullabies; they are too warlike,” some of the most haunting and poet lullabies tend to be Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. I have four children, and the “lullaby” I sang most often to every one of them was “Loch Lomond,” with the bittersweet verse, You take the high road/ and I’ll take the low/ and I’ll be in Scotland before ye/ But me and my true love/ will never meet again/ on the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.
As the baby grows and finds she is loved and cared for, and comes to recognize and enjoy her family, she eventually decides that the world is for the most part a delightful and interesting place, and the need to replicate the conditions of the womb becomes less critical. A 6-month-old baby enjoys lullabies because they are familiar, because they mean a special time with her mother, because the songs have become part of her recollection of comforting and pleasurable experiences. By the time a baby is a year old, she may even participate, lending her old baby warble to harmonize with mother. Now she chooses more cheerful lullabies, songs disposed to a young toddler’s delight in rhyme and simple melody and her new desire to beactively involved in song. (Mom will also be getting more sleep than in the newborn days, which in itself may lead to more upbeat choices.)
During my last pregnancy, I developed vocal polyps and could not sing to my new baby for the first six months of his life. I was bereft. The silence between us was vast and deeply disturbing to me, though I could still talk and coo. Sometimes I would imagine that he looked at me quizzically, wondering where his lullabies had gone. When my throat began to heal, I obsessively ran through my repertoire with him, in a hoarse and wavering voice. (It is worth noting that babies live in a judgment-free state of grace and mind, and even the most self-conscious and tuneless maternal voices need not worry; babies adore the familiarity and feeling of connection lullabies supply and have no opinion at all about talent.)
My baby is almost a year old, and I feel sure that he did not miss some critical phase of development by his lullaby deficiency in his early months, but perhaps I did. Perhaps it is taking me longer to accept the inevitably and independence (and to wean him from the breast). Although I may be a little behind schedule, I take comfort in the lullabies, both happy and sad, because they are a forum for the expression of all the subtle gradations of feeling between mother and child, and surely it is true that “all things are equal when the day is done.”
