Sleep, baby boy;
Oh! ninna and anninia!
God give thee joy.
Oh! ninna and anninia!
Sweet joy be thine;
Oh! ninna and anninia!
Sleep, brother mine.
The singer is the little mother-sister: the child who, while the mother works in the fields or goes to market, is left in charge of the last-come member of the family, and is bound to console it as best she may, for the absence of its natural guardian. The baby is to her somewhat of a doll, just as to the children of the rich the doll is somewhat of a baby. She may be met without going far afield; anyone who has lived near an English village must know the curly-headed little girl who sits on the cottage door-step or among the meadow buttercups, her arms stretched at full length, round a soft, black-eyed creature, small indeed, yet not much smaller than herself. This, she solemnly informs you, is her baby. Not quite so often can she be seen now as before the passing of the Education Act, prior to which all truants fell back on the triumphant excuse, "I can't go to school because I have to mind my baby," some neighbouring infant brother, cousin, nephew, being producible at a moment's notice in support of the assertion. In those days the mere sight of a baby filled persons interested in the promotion of public instruction with wrath and suspicion. Yet womanhood would lose a sweet and sympathetic phase were the little mother-sister to wholly disappear. The songs of the child-nurse are of the slenderest kind; the tether of her imagination has not been cut by hope or memory. As a rule she dwells upon the important fact that mother will soon be here, and when she has said that, she has not much more to say. So it is in an Istriot song: "This is a child who is always crying; be quiet, my soul, for mother is coming back; she will bring thee nice milk, and then she will put thee in the crib to hushaby." A Tuscan correspondent sends me a sister-rhyme which is introduced by a pretty description of the grave-eyed little maiden, of twelve or thirteen years perhaps, responsible almost to sadness, who leans down her face over the baby brother she is rocking in the cradle; and when he stirs and begins to cry, sings softly the oft-told tale of how the dear mamma will come quickly and press him lovingly to her breast:
Che fa mai col volto chino,
Quella tacita fanciulla?