World Rhymes›Aay aay chanda mama
আয় আয় চাঁদা মামা
Aay aay chanda mama · “Come, come, uncle Moon”
BengaliMoon rhymePublic domain
A Bengali rhyme in which a mother calls the moon, the children's "uncle", to come down and bless the baby. Rabindranath Tagore wrote about it in 1894, as an example of how folk rhymes treat the moon as part of the family.
The rhyme
আয় আয় চাঁদা মামা টী দিয়ে যা।
চাঁদের কপালে চাঁদ টী দিয়ে যা।
মাছ কুটলে মুড়ো দেব,
ধান ভানলে কুঁড়ো দেব,
কালো গোরুর দুধ দেব,
দুধ খাবার বাটি দেব,
চাঁদের কপালে চাঁদ টী দিয়ে যা।
Romanization
Āy āy chāṅdā māmā ṭī diye yā.
Chāṅder kapāle chāṅd ṭī diye yā.
Māch kuṭle muṛo deb,
Dhān bhānle kuṅṛo deb,
Kālo gorur dudh deb,
Dudh khābār bāṭi deb,
Chāṅder kapāle chāṅd ṭī diye yā.
Good to know
What it means
Come, come, uncle Moon, and put the beauty mark on the baby. Put the moon-mark on the moon-like forehead. When I cut the fish, I will give you the head; when I husk the rice, I will give you the husk; I will give you milk from the black cow, and a bowl to drink it from.
History
About this rhyme
In Bengal and across India the moon is called "mama", the mother's brother, and mothers sing to a small child to call him down. The "tip" is a dot of black paste put on a baby's forehead as a protective mark, a folk custom meant to keep away the evil eye. Tagore used this rhyme in an essay on children's rhymes, first printed in 1894 and published in book form in 1907. His essay is the oldest print we found; the rhyme itself is surely older. Its name is shared with a Hindi film song, which is a different and protected work.
Sources & rights
- The rhyme is anonymous and traditional. We show the text quoted in Rabindranath Tagore's essay on children's rhymes (Sadhana, 1894; Lokasahitya, 1907), as available on Bengali Wikisource, where it carries a public-domain notice.
- The meaning and the background text are written by us in our own words. The Bengali text and its transliteration still need a native-speaker check.
- There is no recording or tune on this page: we do not claim any.
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