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From your perception of the world, what do you think is the intention of the lullaby?

the more legal form of putting children to sleep?

A song written and performed by a no-talent hack of a guy with my surname. It was a hit, but it turned out to be his only hit, if I recall.

Or there's Nickelback's song.

Oh, Lord. I can't stand Nipplecrack.

I.

Meh.



II.

What's your surname.

Are you saying Shawn's song is better.

let's see.....smith (cure), joel (billy joel), mullins (shawn mullins), palahniuck (chuck palahniuck), kroeger (the dude from nickleback), walsh (james walsh)......meh, that's enough.

I have to assume a lullaby is of some benefit to the singer; possibly even more than it is for the child. Many lullabies can be classified as folk songs. They are passed on through the generations and help connect a person to their heritage. By singing the same lullaby one's own parents did, a tradition is carried on. That's important to many cultures.

None of this can be appreciated by the young child. They'll fall asleep just fine without a lullaby as long as they're tired enough. So I think this practice is at least as meaningful to the parent as it is useful to the child.

I doubt we have any parents around here these days. We never did have many. So we're not going hear that perspective from a user. We can only think about it in the abstract.

Or we can talk about mediocre pop songs with the title "Lullaby".

Only song named Lullaby I know is by a guy with your first name.

You know, lullabies can also have a connection to child abuse.

I think the intention of the lullaby, is to slowly and metaphorically kill a child.

maybe parents came up with them to make themeslves feel less weird about randomly cooing and humming to make their child calm down and fall asleep.

So, um, yeah, the lullaby is to lull the baby to sleep, usually accompanied by some rocking motion to calm the baby down and into a sleeping rhythm.

"Ring around the rosie" has connections to the Black Death (Bubonic Plague).

There are four problems with that comment:

1. Interpreters of the rhyme before the Second World War make no mention of this. Thus, the explanation appeared very late.

2. The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague or with earlier outbreaks of the Black Death.

3. The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme.

4. European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.

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And it's a nursery rhyme, not a lullaby.