Snuggle And Sing: Songs To Keep You Warm In The Early Years

Lullabies have been a curiously common feature in the history of humanity. In fact, it was found that in 315 societies, 28 languages, and 45 countries around the world, researchers found love songs, religious songs, healing songs … and lullabies (Mehr et al., 2019).

Looking at such a wide variety of influences, this paper (with 19 different authors) found that all of these societies:

• use words in their songs
• use dancing

While they found that all musical systems:

• use tonality (relationship of music notes, sounding bright, sad etc.)
• balance repetitive and unexpected melodies and rhythms

This means that most people can work out, just from the sound, whether songs are lullabies, religious, love songs or healing songs, because they are slow or fast, have fewer or more different notes, and have rhythms that make you feel like moving in different ways in response to the beat. Lullabies have been found to have slower beats closer to the relaxed heart rate with fewer notes, promoting soothing feelings of relaxation.

In response to these findings on how soothing lullabies can be, many studies have been done to see whether there is an effect on the body that can be measured. This year, a study was done (Namjoo et al., 2022) with 90 neonatal babies over 14 days. Babies in neonatal wards are known to have high stress responses, including high heart rates, low oxygen levels and poor or disturbed sleep quality, which all affect the body’s ability to heal and grow normally.

This study group involved 3 groups: one group of babies was played recorded lullabies for 20 minutes every day; one had their mothers singing to them for 20 minutes every day; and the final group only listened to the medical machinery of medical monitors and machinery, and adult conversation. Before the musical experiment, all the babies had similar heart rates, oxygen levels and sleep quality, but after the 14 days, researchers saw a significant difference in the results.

Both the recorded and live lullaby-singing improved all of these physiological areas, especially when recorded singing was played while babies slept, although researchers were unsure whether live singing was more or less effective than recorded singing. This suggests that these babies would heal faster, grow more normally, and potentially spend less time in hospital than those without this musical interaction. And that this musical interaction encourages a form of relaxation on a primitive level that does not require language or understanding to benefit from it.

We know that many parents use music playing softly in the background, with some even using white noise (or brown noise, apparently helpful for people on the autistic spectrum). So here are a few well-known lullabies to get you started, from all four “corners” of the British Isles:

Rock a Bye Baby (English)

Rock-a-bye baby on the treetops
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all 

Rock a bye baby up in the sky
On a soft cloud, ‘tis easy to fly
When the cloud bursts, the raindrops will fall
And baby comes down to mother once more

Rock-a-bye baby on the treetops
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And mummy will catch you, cradle and all

This song has a number of unconfirmed histories, ranging from early sightings of native American practices, to old English practices, but all agree that baby will be safe.