LULLABY
LULLABY
The lullaby follows us in a transitional, borderline state, from realityto sleep, from the day with it’s meanings — to the night with it’s myths.This is the time when we are on the edge of life and non-existence, as if rehearsing our final disappearance.Therefore during ancient Greece, the Gods of Death and Sleep: Thanatos and Hypnos — were brothers. This Russian lullaby not so much calms as it does frighten, filling the clouding consciousness with a hidden threat; though not the only theme of the lullaby, yet one of the most important.
Maybe not Russian exclusively, for many cultures tell of scary themes connected with childhood and sleep. Interesting, that children’s fears are not associated with the real danger that waylays during the day, but with the imaginary one that is in a sleep. Therefore, the son of Hypnos is Fobetor, identified with the Aryan demon Mara, from whom the idea of Nightmare. Perhaps it is so because a young person is exposed to the consciousness that someday he/she will fall asleep and not wake up?
Hush, you, little baby,
Do not lie down on the edge,
The little gray Wolf soon will come,
He will grab you by your side,
And drag you into the woods,
To put you under a willow bush.
They will mourn cry and moan,
And will look for dear child,
In the swamps and moss,
At the dark birch forests.
Lyuli-Lyuli-Lyulenki,
Dovey-doves flew in,
Dovey-doves began to coo,
To swing your craddle.
Lyuli-luli, feather,
Do not fly into the lake,
As you fly up high,
You will fall deeply.
As you fall onto the ground,
So the mouse will gnaw you.
As you’ll fall into the water,
So the fish will eat you.
Luli-luli, bayu-bye,
Bogeyman, go to the barn!
There are bricks under the barn,
Nowhere for Bogeyman to lie down.
Under the barn there is a Goat, with the pewter eyes.
Bayu-bayu, da luli,
Even if you die today
We will bury you in December
On the bald mountain,
At the Lord’s side.
We will make you a little coffin,
Made of seventy planks…
“Do not lie down on the edge…”
These spells are not without reason preserved in the tradition of this lullaby. They testify to a feeling of fear, anguish and depression born inearly childhood, that are transmitted from generation to generation. Søren Kierkegaard distinguished the feelings of fright (Frygt) and real existential fear (Angst). The first has it’s objective
reason, a clear source of threat and danger.
The second is «the fear of everything», a constant irrational feeling often understood as an anxiety that has no apparent cause. In the philosophy of existentialism, fear awakens in man it’s true essence and puts it on the edge of being, where the secondary disappears and only the main thing remains. Maybe this is that very edge that the little man for which the lullaby sounds, is afraid of and still can not escape.