Hush Little Baby, Don't say a word.
Momma's gonna buy you a mocking bird.
And if that mocking bird don't sing,
Momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Momma's gonna buy you a looking glass.
And if that looking glass should break,
Momma's gonna bake you a birthday cake.
And if that birthday cake's too tart,
Momma's gonna buy you a horse and cart.
And if that horse and cart don't go,
Momma's gonna buy you a boat to row.
And if that rowing boat don't float,
Momma's gonna buy you a billy goat.
Hush little baby don't say a word,
Momma's gonna buy you a mocking bird.
I remember my mother singing this lullaby to me when I was so young that I remember nothing else from then. I remember it as being sad, so sad that it seemed that the universe would break for sorrow, though this is probably at least somewhat exaggerated by my memory. Still, I sometimes sing it now and it is very, very sad.
People have noticed, in modern times, that old farie tales, when not told by Disney, are often bloody and gorey. Similarly, if they would pay attention, they would notice that lullabies are very sad things.
There is a reason for all of this, though: as human beings part of our inheritence is pain and sorrow. The world is among other things a painful place. Wolves do once in a while eat grandmothers and criminals are sometimes executed. The world is a very sad place. Sometimes even our best attempts at happiness simply don't work. Sometimes, the mocking bird simply does not sing.
And you'll notice in this lullaby how there is that recognition of the possibility of futility. The mother in the song keeps trying to make things right for her child, but eventually it is possible that she simply cannot. For a while it bugged me that the penultimate verse is not connected to the last verse, but I eventually realized that it is. You have to sing it properly to have the effect, and unfortunately I can't describe the right way to do it. You have to somehow work a note of defeat and resignation.
I hope that I am not being misunderstood here -- this lullaby is not a song of defeat. It is a song of acceptance. But here, let's look at it. In the beginning, the mother begins by promising her baby something nice. Then she realizes that it has no guarantees, so she tries to provide insurance. She wants to guarantee the baby's happiness, so she includes a non-performance clause. But each time she tries to make the baby's happiness guaranteed, she realizes that she cannot. Eventually, she realizes that it is futal to attempt to assure happiness, it is not in her power to do so. So she accepts it, she stops worrying that the world will not be perfect, and goes back to simply trying to make it better.
The connection between the last two verses is unspoken but in some sense the point of the lullaby. Human beings should try for happiness, but they cannot count on it. Foolish men dispair of this and get trapped in inaction. Wise men accept it and simply try and hope for the best. If they are theists, they then put their faith in God that all will turn out well. But in the end neither of them can guarantee happiness, it simply is not within a man's power to do so.
And this is why, I think, that we sing songs of human woe to children. Childhood is not a time to be shielded from the world, as some foolish people now think, but a time to learn to live in it. It is true that sometimes children need to be shielded from what they have not yet been taught to deal with, for fear that they may learn the wrong lessons from it, but our goal must be to make men out of our boys. And so we teach them not only about the existence of human woe (which they will necessarily learn at some point anyway), but also how to deal with it.
There are some who think that it is possible to always be happy, that misfortune and sorrow can be avoided. It is possible, but the price is high: only by avoiding love can you avoid loss. So if you are prepared to be happy, you must be prepared to be sad. And really, unless you stick your head in the sand, it's pretty hard to miss the fact that this world is a pretty sad place.