Bye, Baby Bunting

One of the oldest rhymes in the English language — its roots reach back to the fifteenth century. The first British colonists carried it across the ocean to New England, where it settled deep into the folk culture of Massachusetts. It paints a playful, reassuring picture: the whole family busy providing for the new baby, with father off hunting for a soft rabbit skin to wrap the little one in.

When explorers and settlers sailed for the New World from 1492 onwards, they didn’t only bring goods and tools — they brought the prayers and cradle songs they sang to their children. Lullabies from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe were “replanted” in the Americas, where they slowly mixed with local traditions — which is why so many American lullabies still carry an old European heart inside them.