Our new arrival, Matthew, is going on a month old, and he’s learning a lot about the world. One of the things he’s learning is that when Papa holds him, it’s not delicious like with Mama — but Papa sings songs, which seems to interest him. Suz says that when he’s not hungry he seems to prefer to be held by Papa, which may have as much to do with my patented rocking hold technique as my crooning, but I like to think the crooning helps too.
I’ve always sung songs to all our kids. We sing hymns every evening with prayers, and occasionally I sing religious songs, but for the most part my eclectic repertoire centers on folk, work songs, lullabies and songs for children.
When I was a kid I listened all the time to a collection of folk songs for children written by Woody Guthrie (thanks to reader StephC for correctly calling out Woody Guthrie Children’s Songs by Bob & Louise DeCormier; you can also hear Woody’s and Arlo’s versions of many of the songs here and here). A number of those songs are staples in our household, like “Bling Blang,” which refers to the ringing of a hammer, not tacky jewelry. The versions I grew up with seem not to be online in their totality, but I kind of like this Johnny Cash cover.
You get a hammer and I'll get a nail
And you catch a bird and I'll catch a snail
You bring a board and I'll bring a saw
And we'll build a house for the baby-o
Chorus
Bling blang, hammer with my hammer
Zingo zango, cutting with my saw
Bling blang, hammer with my hammer
Zingo zango, cutting with my saw
Other staples from that album include “Mail Myself to You” (here’s a Pete Seegar version), “Race You Down the Mountain” (“Magic Garden” rendition) and “Little Seed” (which I can’t find online in full, but you can hear excerpts here and here).
Some of my songs might raise some eyebrows for their somewhat dark content. Of course babies don’t understand the words, but I keep right on singing the songs as they get older (partially because the babies keep coming). One of my favorites is Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon,” about coal mining in the Appalachians, which I learned more or less as performed by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (it was also perfomed by Johnny Cash in his Folsom prison album; here’s a Gordon Lightfoot cover):
Now listen you fellers, so young and so fine,
And seek not your fortune in the dark dreary mines.
For it’ll form as a habit and seep into your soul,
'Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal.
Chorus
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where the danger is double and the pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mines.
My favorite verse is the last, which I sing softly and slowly.
Oh, I hope when I'm dead and the ages do roll,
My body will blacken and turn into coal.
Then I'll look down below from my heavenly home
And pity the miner a-diggin' my bones…
Where it's dark as a dungeon…
Somewhat similar in mood, though very different in feel, is “Drill, Ye Tarriers,” a work song about Irish workers drilling and blasting through rock for a railroad. The version I learned goes like this (this version is pretty close):
Every morning at seven o'clock
There's twenty tarriers a-workin' at the rock
And the boss comes along and he says keep still
And come down heavy on the cast iron drill
Chorus
So drill, ye tarriers, drill…and drill, ye tarriers, drill
Oh it's work all day for the sugar in your tay
Down behind the railway
And drill, ye tarriers, drill…
(If you sing it with an Irish accent, it’s clear that “sugar in your tay” is “sugar in your tea.” By the same token, “tarrier” may be an accented form of “terrier,” comparing the workers to terriers digging out prey.)
The next two verses go on to expound on the epic stinginess of the new foreman, Dan McCann: After a “premature blast” sends a worker named Jim Goff a mile in the air, McCann docks Goff’s pay a dollar “for the time you were up in the sky”!
One of the things I most like to sing is a fragment of a song: just four lines of the chorus of a tune I first heard on the radio, and only years later learned was written by Lyle Lovett. The song is “If I Had a Boat,” and the words of the chorus are one of the niftiest bits of lyric writing I’ve ever heard. Here is how it starts:
If I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony…
I like to pause here a moment, because this is where Lovett’s brilliantly askew sensibilities come in. Convention leads you to expect a sort of analogous parallelism, so that the line should end, for example, “…I’d ride out on the range,” or something of the sort. Instead, Lovett unexpectedly deploys synthetic parallelism:
…I’d ride him on my boat
And we would all together go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat.
Ha! That cracks me up. “If I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat.” Of course you would! Who wouldn’t? What could be better than that?
There’s more to the song than the chorus, and I know some folks are fans of the verse about Tonto, but for my money the chorus is just perfect and the verses add nothing, so I only sing the chorus (anyway, there are limits to what I’ll sing to kids). It’s short, but I work variations and ad libs, and it holds up.
Another nifty bit of writing about riding a horse is “A Cowboy Needs a Horse,” which I learned from the delightful 1956 Disney short by that title, but which was apparently written by Donny Osmond.
Oh, a cowboy needs a horse, needs a horse, needs a horse
And he's gotta have a rope, have a rope, have a rope
And he oughta have a song, have a song, have a song
If he wants to keep ridin'
Now a cowboy needs a hat, needs a hat, needs a hat
And a pair of fancy boots, fancy boots, fancy boots
And a set of shiny spurs, shiny spurs, shiny spurs
If he wants to keep ridin'
Oh, the fence is long and the sun is hot
And the good Lord knows that a cowboy's gotta
Keep ridin', ridin' along…
Oh, and speaking of songs from movies, there’s the song from Babe, “If I Had Words” (or “Moonshine” as we call it), written by Yvonne Keeley and Scott Fitzgerald. I’ve often sung this as a lullabye. The lyrics James Cromwell sings are somewhat different from the ones the mice sing over the end credits, but apparently the version I picked is very close to the original:
If I had words to make a day for you
I’d sing you a morning golden and new.
I would make this day last for all time
Give you a night deep in moonshine.
And speaking of lullabies from movies, the most famous of them all was popularized by Bing Crosby in the quintessential Golden Age Catholic movie, Going My Way, i.e., “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral”:
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Hush now don't you cry!
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, That's an Irish lullaby.
I actually learned that one not from the movie, but from my mother who sang it to me.
That’s more than enough to give you a sense of my predilections in singing for children…How about you? Those of you with kids, do you sing to them? What are your favorites?
If you can find them on the Internet, please include links so others can hear them (though links may delay your comment appearing, especially a lot of links; I promise I’ll clear them as quickly as I can).
Comments
Post a Comment
this is a lullabye I first heard sung as a duet by the singer Jewel and her mother. It was the lullabye her mother used to sing to her, and it is beautiful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLBM6-eyUNM
here’s a little bird that somebody sends
down to the earth to live on the wind.
borne on the wind and he sleeps on the wind
this little bird that somebody sends.
he’s light and fragile and feathered sky blue,
so thin and graceful the sun shines through.
this little bird who lives on the wind,
this little bird that somebody sends.
he flies so high up in the sky
out of reach of human eye.
and the only time that he touches the ground
is when that little bird
is when that little bird
is when that little bird dies.
another that I love was one we sang in choir in highschool, a scottish poem by Robert Burns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxYy5_KyasA
O, MY Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.
O, my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
congratulations on your new baby! we welcomed our 3rd daughter 7 weeks ago :) my other 2 girls, ages 3 and 4, like to sing the wishing well song from Snow White with me
My babies are all too big hold in my arms, and too musically refined to hear me sing to them. I loved this column and loved the cowboy songs enough to learn em.
This is one we learned over here in Ireland, and it is a good rocking song.
Morning Town Ride
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsqNcZ1JqW8
My Dad was in the Army and for a time stationed at Ft . Bragg, NC as a paratrooper. My all time favorite lullaby is called “Blood on the Risers” about a paratrooper whose shoot dioesn’t open sung to the tune of Battle Hymn opf the Republic. My mom thought it was awful as it’s a prettyu bloody song, but I still cannot sing it to my kids whom I would love to pass the tradition on to, because I get too chocked up and freak them out, especially since my Dad died of Leukemia in 2009. So we stick to lots of zirish songs that my Dad used to sing to my boys whjen they were wee babes, especially, “I’ll Tell me ma” a great version of which is found on “Irish Heartbeat” a collaboration between Van Morrison and The Chieftans.
I sing. It’s amazing the calming effect singing has on the kids - baby and 5 year old. For lack of many songs remembered, I often resort to church songs (more calming) and sometimes nursery rhymes. A couple of my go-to songs are Sing of Mary and Salve Regina.
MR. ROGERS SONGS! “It’s You I Like” is about unconditional love. it;s the best. You can fins them at the PBS website.
My husband sang “A Cowboy Needs a Horse” and I had never heard it. He was born in 1956 and this song was popular when he was a child in Montana. He’ll be glad to know someone else knows of it besides him!
This article brings back memories from when my kids were young enough to not know that I’m not a great singer. My (and their) favorites were much more baby boomer music related and based on songs I knew the words to. Surprisingly, Nilsson provided two of them; The Moonbeam Song, and the Coconut Song. Other favorites were Beatles songs like Yesterday, Penny Lane and Goodnight.
First song I sang to both of them was “Hound Dog,” because every child’s life should begin with a little Elvis.
“You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.” Which, you know, they were…
When I sing to our kids, it’s usually fragments of old They Might Be Giants songs. Songs like “Cowtown”, “Mrs. Train”, or “Spiraling Shape” can be very soothing to an infant.
I always sing to my kids! -even if it doesn’t calm them down as quickly or effectively as I’d like, it calms me down! :-)
For my oldest, my go-to was “Hail Mary, Gentle Woman.”
For my next, it was “All The Pretty Horses” (which I didn’t know until doing a KinderMusik class with my oldest)
For my current baby, it’s simply humming the myriad of Suzuki Violin songs that my oldest is learning :-)
If I need back-up, I resort to Christmas songs (!) like Silent Night (English and German, depending on how long it takes) and “Lu-Lai” (sp?) among others.
Congratulations on your newest addition—so precious!
“Baby Mine” from Dumbo is my lullaby of choice for all my babies. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Somewhere Out There” would come next.
We sing a lot, mainly your more typical kids’ songs but they also know the national anthems of US and Canada, seasonal hymns (“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is still in the regular rotation) and whatever else we feel like at a given time. My 2yo loves to sing “Heigh-Ho” complete with squeaky “whistling”.
Dh is not great at remembering song lyrics, but he’s the master of making up new ones on the fly. The boys have caught on and can often be heard improvising their own songs as well. :)
Danielle Bean once posted a lullaby (“Do, do, l’enfant, do. L’enfant dormire bien vite…”), but I can’t find that same rendition of it - which I love and have sung to all my kids.
We have a bunch of folk albums - Pete Seeger’s and Mike & Peggy Seeger’s “American Folk Songs and Games for Children”; various Alabama women in the 40’s on “Bullfrog Jumped”; Sam Hinton’s “I’ll Sing You a Story” - and I sing songs to my kids from all those.
And Jewel has a lovely album of lullabies, so I sing some of those too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnjATF8D4NY (Circle Song)
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeyQM3JKpXE (Twinkle twinkle little star)
I used to sing “All the Pretty Little Horses” too! Here is a link to Joan Baez’s version: http://tinyurl.com/prettyhorses
Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game. http://tinyurl.com/mitchellcirclegame
And Hobo’s Lullaby: http://tinyurl.com/hobolullaby
That was before I returned to the Church, or there would have been hymns :-)
Steven, is it Woodie Guthrie Children Songs with Bob & Louise de Cormier?
I’m 41, and remember every song from a 33 LP my younger sister played…nonstop…
That said, she just had her first child last month, and when I ordered the (now) CD for her, I impulsively ordered a second for me & my kids!
I like “All the Pretty Little Horses”, too, as well as the one from “Babe.”
My husband’s traditional baby-rocking songs are all of the Bruce Springsteen variety.
StephC: THAT’S THE ONE! Thank you!
I bought my first decent guitar when my wife was pregnant, knowing I’d now be staying home much more, and it was a good thing to have around. Singing is essential; try “Mull of Kintyre” (Paul McCartney) for a good lullabye song.
I don’t know why, but “Darling Clementine” calms my babies down like no other song. It’s a morbid, depressing song, but they love it.
I always sing to my baby, as a child I use to be in the choir & dance school, go to the old people homes, sing the old time songs which I sing to my daughter. When she wakes up she is humming away. When we go to mass and sing she sings along bringing a smile to all nearby. My daughter is 13months old loves nursery rhymes & her first song I sang to her was baby face, I love singing an old hyme, I saw the grass I saw the trees & the boats along the shore, & colours of day. She joins in humming away, we sing happy songs gods blessing :)
I used to sing “Take me out to the ball-game” as a lullaby! Just slow the tempo a bit.
My husband claims we suffer from musical turret’s. We sing all the time, for almost any reason. When the kids are feeling bleh, we sing our own song to the tune of frere Jacques:
We love Gracie,(or name of who we are singing to!)
we love Gracie,
Yes we do!
Yes we do!
She is always laughing
Her brother had to do the Heimich
Yes he did
Yes he did
As the kids have gotten older, they sing to Mommy and Daddy, and I’m not sure we’ve ever had the same verse twice! But you can change the feel just by changing the words. We also so sing showtunes, hymns, and whatever we’ve been listening to on the radio.
At bedtime, my folks sang the “standards” - Deedle deedle dumpling, I’ve been working on the railroad….but my dad had a mischevious streak and taught us stuff like “Brother can you spare a dime?” and “Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine, when you gonna let me get sober?”
We also sang Broadway show tunes along with the records, and Christmas hymns in other languages, learned phonetically.
Kids will sing anything and they love drama. The big gesture is never lost on them.
Baby number 8 got to hear lots of Mass parts; over and over and over. Holy, Holy, Holy. Alleluia. Lamb of God. I was really tired and they were really easy to remember and very short to sing. :)
I like to sing this one (I first heard the Clancy Brothers sing it), er, in English
http://www.irishpage.com/poems/dromore.htm
And also this one which the Kingston Trio sang:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/gue-gue-lyrics-kingston-trio.html
I loved your repertoire! I’m going to have to teach myself some of these songs you mentioned.
MY WIFE AND ARE NOW MARRIED 47 YEARS. WE WERE MARRIED KIND OF LATE, IN THAT I NARRIED AN OLDER WOMAN OF GREAT BEAUTY GRACE. WE WERE BLESSED TO HAVE SEVEN CHILDREN IN EIGHT YEARS. THE ORDER WAS: A BOY,A GIRL, THEN TWIN GIRLS, ANOTHER GIRLAND THEN TWO BOYS. THEY ARE ALL MARRIED NOW AND HAVE CHILDREN. WHY I AM TELLING YOU ALL OF THIS IS TO SAY, IF YOU WORK WITH GOD’S PLAN, YOU WILL BE BLESSED WITH GREATLY.
AS THE WERE ALL CLOSE TOGETHER WE OF COURSE DID MOST THING TOGETHER.EVERY NIGHT WE WOULD PRAY THE ROSARY, SAYING MONASTIC COMPLINE AND SING THE SALVE AND UP TO BED WHERE I WOULD SING THEM TO SLEEP.
WHAT HAPPENSD FROM THAT WAS THAT MY WIFE FOUND A WONDERFUL NEIGHBOR, WHO TAUGHT THE FOUR GIRLS TO SINF “BILLA CANTO”. AS WOULD HAPPEN, WE HOME SCHOOLED ANS AS PART OF THE PROGRAM OUR GIRLS GAVE MANY CONCERTS TO VARIOUS SENIOR CENTERS. MY WIFE LOVIND THE OLD SONG ON WHICH WE ON WHICH WE HAD HEARD ALL OF OUR YUNGER LIVES, BECAME THE SONGS WHICH THE GIRLS SANG BEST. THIS TAUGHT THE SO MUCH HOW TO TEASH THEIR SHILDREN.
ALWAYS WE WOULD MAKE OUR LAST SONG, ONE OF OUR BEAUTIFUL ALD HYMNS.
OUR GIRLS WHEN PREGNENTWOULD START TO SING TO THEIR BABYS IN THE WOMB AND THEN NEVER QUITE STOPPED DOING SO AS THEY GREW. IT IS FUNNY THOUGH, THE BOYS USE TO LISTEN TO ALL OF THE SONGS BUT DID NOT ENJOY SINGING UNTIL THEIR LATE TEENS, WHEN THEY HAD AB BAND.
I GUESS WHAT I AN TRYING TO SAY THAT, WHILE THEY PLAT VARIOUS INSTRAMENT, WHICH YOU MUST CARRY WITH YOU, OUR GOD GIVEN VOICE WE ALWAYS HAVE WITH US,TO MAKE OUR SELVE AND OTHERS HAPPY AND TO PRAISE OUR DEAR LORD ALWAYS. BLESS YOU ALL, JOHN
I sing hymns to my kids - they’re the songs I can remember all the words to when I’m really tired - and also a few traditional folk songs (The water is wide, Danny Boy, etc.)
Have you heard Elizabeth Mitchell’s albums of children’s music? I sometimes refer to it as children’s music that doesn’t drive adults crazy and have found myself singing her songs with my children. I really like the “You are my little bird” album - and you can hear snippets of the tracks at http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-My-Little-Bird/dp/B000GKZN9M
Steven, I congratulate you on your new born. You obviously love being a father and of course the world needs children - more children desperately. But there is one major concern I have considering where you are making this presentation and that is, will you be introducing any Catholic theological principles and concepts regarding the family considering you are using very valuable space of a Catholic media? The world is floundering - the world is dying from lack of truth. Will you be telling us how you bless your family by prayers, devotions and Catholic studies on keeping a Catholic focus? If one walks into your home do they know your home is where Catholics live and how? Why aren’t you singing hymns to your new born? Steven, are you a Catholic? Yes, no and how long if yes?
It takes a lot of courage to raise a family of seven children. How do you explain this to the population controllers? You and your wife should be affirmed by the world and of course you are not. Steven, how do you encourage other parents to be open to new life, to more children of their own?
One of my favorite lullabies to sing my two-year-old is called “Blue Caravan” by Vienna Teng, which you can listen to on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OXNjXEV5hI (If you decide from this that you want to listen to more Vienna Teng, be warned that most of the rest of this album, “Dreaming Through the Noise,” isn’t very good. Her other three albums are excellent, though, particularly “Inland Territory.”) I used to sing him “Never Never Land” from the stage musical version of Peter Pan, but then he learned the words and would start singing along to keep himself awake! My husband likes to sing him to sleep with “Pange Lingua”—it’s slow, soothing, repetitive, has Latin lyrics that he won’t try to sing along with, and keeps my husband in a prayerful state so he gets less annoyed if Billy has “I don’t wanna go to bed” tantrums.
I sang (and sing) to all of my children and chose a special lullaby for each one—by number five I was running out of good choices so I sing “Edelweiss” with my girl’s name instead of the flower (“blossom of love” ; “bless our family forever”). The eightfold alleluia is an excellent song to calm parent and child at bedtime and prepare for that last prayer! A family favorite is a song my mother sang to me, and she learned it from one of the sisters who taught her when she was little. I would be interested if anyone else knows it: “Where are you going, little bird?” It’s a question-and-answer song in which the bird is going to her nest and she tells the questioning girl that her eggs will be little birds that “sing praise to God.”
The experience I’ve had with singing songs to infants is that they respond to everything you expose them to. These little people recently were with the Father in Heaven and they have a strong spiritual sense untampered yet by worldliness. Parents and grandparents can greatly assist how their inner most being should be formed in order for them to become virtuous souls. Gregorian Chant will soothe infants. Speak the Catechism into their little ears to assist in the Catholic development of their consciences. Infant’s spirits resignate and respond to tender devotional sounds of prayer spoken or sung to them. Christmas Hymns are good choices to sing to them; devotional prayers to Our Blessed Mother, Easter Songs….. Whisper the Rosary to them. I firmly believe that little ones exposed to these devotionals will store all these in their heart and their subconscience. We can trust that they will have peace, stamina, and understanding beyond all explanation on how they are to live their life. After all, earth is not their home and each action will determine their destiny. Begin early in training them to complete their mission on successfully on earth so that they may return home safely to the Father who willed them into existence.
A new one for our two-year-old: he’s going through a huge farm animals phase right now (his theme for his second birthday is Old MacDonald), so I’ve started singing him “The Friendly Beasts.” He loves it and now refuses to go to sleep without hearing at least one rendition of “sing Jesus-our-brother again!” I guess it’s always Christmas at our house!
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
2. Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
3. Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
perfect in power, in love and purity.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.