Collection Information: Pretty Ponies was collected on May 22nd, 2014 in Brewster, Massachusetts. It belongs to the
folkloric genre called lullabies.
Informant Data: The informant is Marcel Consiglio, who is 20 years old and a student at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. He is Dominican and Italian in heritage, and spend seven years of his childhood in England
Text:
Row row row your boat,
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream
Context: This lullaby was sung to Marcel by his preschool teacher to
all of her students during nap time at age 3 and 4, to put them all to
sleep. It is a very widely known lullaby and common among all children,
at least when we were both growing up.
Interpretation and Meaning: A classic and very simple lullaby known by all generations, this lullaby has sensible but unrelated lyrics, implying that the message of the lullaby is not in fact the most important part, but how it makes the child feel, which is a common lullaby theme. Simple words like “row”, “boat”, “gently”, “stream”, and “dream” are all easily understood by small children and focusing on those words within their rhyming pattern sooths the child to sleep. Additionally the idea that life is but a dream allows the child to transition from the world of reality that they live in into the dream world where they can use their imagination.
Collector’s Information: Ben Wood, Dartmouth ’16, Russian 13, Professor Mikhail Gronas, Spring 2014
