One of Grieg’s most charming lyrics is this thoroughly unique and
characteristic Cradle Song. This has always been a most attractive and
facilely treated subject for piano-compositions, on account of the way
in which it lends itself to realistic handling.
The general plan of these compositions is always substantially the same:
a simple, swinging accompaniment in the left hand, symbolizing the
rocking cradle, and a soft, soothing melody in the right, more or less
elaborately ornamented, suggesting the song of the nurse or mother
lulling the child to rest.
An almost infinite variety of effect is possible, however, within these
seemingly narrow limits, dependent upon the differing ability and
personality of the composer, the diversity in melodic and harmonic
coloring, and especially upon the environment and conditions conceived
of by the writer as the setting or background of the picture. The range
of legitimate suggestion in this regard by means of such works is as
broad as that of human experience itself. For instance, the child
imagined may be the idolized prince of a royal line, rocked in a golden
cradle with a jeweled crown embossed upon its satin canopy, and guarded
by the loyalty, the hopes and pride of a mighty nation; or it may be the
sickly offspring of want and suffering, doomed from its birth to sorrow
and struggle and disappointment, to a crown of toil and a heritage of
tears; or perhaps it may be a fairy changeling, stolen by Titania in
some wayward caprice, rocked to sleep in a lily-cup upon crystal waves,
or watching, with large, wondering human eyes, the pranks of the forest
elves as they trace with swiftly circling feet their magic rings upon
the moss, or awaken the morning-glories upon the lawn with a shower-bath
of dew.
The lullaby song of the mother may thrill with the sweet content and
rapturous joy of a life of love and brightness but just begun, and
seemingly endless in its forward vista of ever new and ever glad
surprises. Her fancies may be winged by hope and happiness to airy
flights in which no sky-piercing height seems impossible; or her voice
may vibrate with the songs of a broken-hearted widow, who guards the
little sleeper in an agony of loving fear, as the last treasure saved
from the wreck of her world. As the smallest plot of garden ground
possesses the capacity to receive and develop the germs of the most
diverse forms of vegetation, from the violet to the oak, from the
fragrant rose to the deadly poppy, so these modest little musical forms
are replete with an almost boundless potentiality of suggestion.
In the case of this particular work by Grieg, the child portrayed is no
delicate rose-tinted girl-baby, downily cushioned upon silken pillows,
peeping timidly from a drift of dainty laces like the first crocuses
from the feathery snow of April, but the lusty son of a Viking stock,
with the blood of a sturdy race of fighters coursing red through his
veins, and with a will and a voice of his own, cradled in the hollow
trunk of a pine or the hide-lashed blade-bones of the elk, wrapped in
the skin of wolf or bear, and lulled to sleep by the rough, but kindly,
crooning of a peasant nurse. May we not fancy the refrain of her song
somewhat after the fashion of the following lines?
“Oh, hush thee, my baby;
The time will soon come
When thy rest will be broken
By trumpet and drum,
When the bows will be bent,
The blades will be red,
And the beacon of battle
Will blaze overhead.
Then hush thee, my baby,
Take rest while you may,
For strife comes with manhood
As waking with day.”