She goes a-singing to her child this song.
Now, in the first place, the comparison of the child's gradual falling asleep with the slow ignition of fresh-cut wood is the common property of all the populations whose ethnical centre of gravity lies in Venice. I have seen an Istriot version of it, and I heard it sung by a countrywoman at San Martino di Castrozza in the Trentino; so that, at all event, Italia redenta and irredenta has a community of song. The second thing that calls for remark is the direct invocation of sleep. A distinct little group of cradle ditties displays this characteristic. "Come, sleep," cries the Grecian mother, "come, sleep, take him away; come sleep, and make him slumber. Carry him to the vineyard of the Aga, to the gardens of the Aga. The Aga will give him grapes; his wife, roses; his servant, pancakes." A second Greek lullaby must have sprung from a luxuriant imagination. It comes from Schio:
Sleep, carry off my son, o'er whom three sentinels do watch,
Three sentinels, three warders brave, three mates you cannot match.
These guards: the sun upon the hill, the eagle on the plain,
And Boreas, whose chilly blasts do hurry o'er the main.
—The sun went down into the west, the eagle sank to sleep,
Chill Boreas to his mother sped across the briny deep.
"My son, where were you yesterday? Where on the former night?
Or with the moon or with the stars did you contend in fight?