The poor distracted mothers, with their faces full of grief, won the pity of the crowd, and many women exclaimed aloud, half believing that the babies were really going to be snatched from them and killed!
Then one of the women, in a voice shaken with fear, sang alone:
“I lull my child wondrously sweet,
And in my arms I do it keep,
Because that it should not cry.”
And another replied, calling on the new-born King:
“That Babe that is born in Bethlehem so meek,
He save my child and me from villainy.”
Yet another said:
“Be still! be still! my little child!