When I was very young my Grandpa sang “Go Tell Aunt Rhode” to me at bed time.
I can’t say for sure that this hampered my singing ability in the opposite way that one says playing classical music to infants will enhance theirs. All I can tell you is that not even my Granny’s lullabies could outweigh the effects of the rest of the family’s singing and my innate lack of musical ability.
Well meaning people try to convince me that I exaggerate and that I must be a fine singer.
They are wrong.
All that being said, I also have children.
Which means that, they have been, or are, babies. Babies require lullabies, which means that I, their mother, need to sing.
So I sing.
The songs I choose to sing to my kids have one criteria – they must fall into my lowish, five note range. A range, that I have discovered, could be named the “drunken, dying range.”
I sing songs about, dying of sickness, and drunkenness, horses falling through the ice, dying at war, drinking whiskey, drowning, and people who have gout. Not your average nursery themes.
Unorthodox as the songs may be my singing, like my Grandpa’s, puts the kids to sleep. Whether it’s the soothing sounds of our voices or self defense is still a subject up for debate.
Written in response to Prompts for the Promptless – Episode 8 The Litmus hosted by Rarasaur and accidentally published before final editing due to a slip of the thumb -sorry!
A excerpt from A.A. Milne’s The house at Pooh Corner sums up my feelings on this book quite nicely:
Behind the Willows 