_Le Bon Roi
Dagobert_ has been sung over French cradles since the legend was fresh.
The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune and the verse that she
herself slept to when a child. The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in
_Le Pont a' Avignon_, is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the
_tete a tete of_ child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered
rooms at night. _Malbrook_ would be comparatively modern, were not all
things that are sung to a drowsing child as distant as the day of
Abraham.
If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some of
them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate races
that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to the white
child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep in the tropical
night. His closing eyes are filled with alien images.
THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS
It is generally understood in the family that the nurse who menaces a
child, whether with the supernatural or with simple sweeps, lions, or
tigers--goes. The rule is a right one, for the appeal to fear may
possibly hurt a child; nevertheless, it oftener fails to hurt him. If he
is prone to fears, he will be helpless under their grasp, without the
help of human tales. The night will threaten him, the shadow will
pursue, the dream will catch him; terror itself have him by the heart.
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