Lullaby

I've been painting today. Slow progress thanks to my decision to prepare properly and sugar soap walls, and spakfilla the cracks in the cornices, dust away the cobwebs and realise that I haven't actually cleaned right behind the toilet for a long time! This time I was careful and newspapered the windows and mirrors because I'm the next Pro Hart or Jackson Pollack. For some reason, whilst rhythmically sloshing the roller up and down (yes I put too much paint on it and ended up spattering my glasses), I began singing a lullaby that was sung to me as a child by my Grandma and my mother and father, and one I've sung to both my children at bed time:

Go to sleep my little picanny
Brer fox gonna catch you if ya don't
Slumber on the bosom of your mammy
Mama goin to swap yo if you don't

Ah-loo-ah-loo-ah-looah-loo-ah-loo-ah
Underneath the silver southern moon
Lullabye, Rockabye Mama's li'l baby
Mama's li'l Alabama Coon

Then there was:

Go to sleep my baby
Close your pretty eyes
Angels are above you
Peeping at you from the starry skies
Great big moon is shining
Stars begin to peep
Its time for little picaninnies to go to sleep

I wish I could find the tune's to show you that despite the rather odd lyric, they were sweet and gentle and melodic.

Now before you get on your politically correct soapboxes and complain about me using the word coon or picaninny - these were the days of the gollywog and nothing racist or offensive was meant. In fact I always assumed they were old slave songs but it seems the latter at least was written more recently and is known as the Wyoming Lullaby. They had sweet little tunes and were clearly written to aid in putting little ones to sleep.

Let me explain. My family has four regularly sung lullabies. They have been handed down through four generations. The first is the Alabama Coon one. . another "Go to Sleep My Baby" (more references to coons and moons) an old music hall classic, Lily of Laguna and another is an old wartime song "Who's Your Lady Friend" a slightly risque soldier's song about infidelity (She's not the girl I saw you with at Brighton, so who, who who's your lady friend?). Not your usual nursery rhymes or traditional lullabies but they were sung soporifically and had us in a comfortable sleepy stupor often before the last was finished.

Whilst these might be rather odd songs to sing to a baby - my family did. Routinely. Every night. All the kids know the words and the tunes and they are likely to be passed on to the next generation although I suspect the words have become shadows of their former selves in a perverse Chinese Whispery kind of way. I just wonder how on earth a lullaby about an Alabama piccaninny being threatened with the whip unless she went to sleep became family tradition! I and about 50 distant Welsh relatives, do own land in Louisiana, maybe there's a connection there?

Doesn't seem so obtuse to sing a lullaby about giant spiders then does it?

Okay I just wanted an excuse to play the Cure . . .

And a new Link Switch seems to have fixed my computer problems in the short term. Either that or it's just decided it prefers night shift!