The Indian mother has certainly invented the most convenient method of carrying and lullabying her baby. All babies are nearly of the same size, and nobody need to be told how long or wide a baby frame is made. It is a straight board, sometimes with side pieces, and always with a hoop over the head from which to suspend a curtain for the protection of the little eyes from the sun, and thus enveloped in a blanket and laced to the frame, they were carried upon the back of the mother by a stay which came over her forehead, and with much less fatigue than in the arms. The baby is kept in the frame a great portion of the time when it is an infant, and it is astonishing how contented it remains in its little prison. When the mother is at work in the field she hangs her baby on a low limb of a tree, where it is rocked by the wind. When she is busy in the house, she suspends it on a nail or seats it in the corner, and sometimes hangs it where she can swing it to and fro as she passes, “singing as she goes.”
The following is a baby song, which will compare well with the songs of a similar sentiment among any people; and as in other cases, the translation is not so good as the original:
CRADLE SONG.
Swinging, swinging, lullaby,
Sleep, little daughter sleep,
‘Tis your mother watching by;
Swinging, swinging she will keep
Little daughter lullaby.
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‘Tis your mother loves you dearest,