Lullabies of the World Author:Dorothy Berliner Commins Lullabies are love songs. Sometimes they are gay and sometimes they are sad; but, whatever the mood, they are always tender. They are the expression of one of the deepest emotions of the human spirit. A lullaby is born in a mother's heart to live on in the child's memory, for a lifetime and even longer; for lullabies are passed on from genera... more »tion to generation.
The world today is changing swiftly. No pattern of family life in any part of the world can be definitive. Lives do not set like concrete, nor is folklore cast in bronze. The characteristic of folk music has been its flexiblity, its power to keep an identity while borrowing and assimilating elements form other cultures. Today diverse and distant cultures touch upon each other, for technological development has made time, distance and natural barriers dwindle.
One day we may find ourselves members of one world. This will be only the fulfullment of the human conditon; for, in a real sense, there has been one world since the beginning of human history, the family of man. Mother love is universal. It survives in folk lullabies all over the world. Though cultures may change, nations rise and fall, languages evolve or vanish, there will always be lullabies. This collection is designed to preserve something of the past and at the same time to look forward to the future.
The the child in the cradle or the mother's arms, these love songs are the first melodies heard. They are sung at an hour when the mother's presence and the sound of her voice mean safety and peace and comfort. While the mother rocks her child back and forth, old melodies are recalled and return. She sings what she remembers hearing as a baby, what her mother sang to her, and her mother's mother. New words are added. Slight changes in the melody occur, but the substance and the spirit are unchanging.« less