"Sleep, baby, sleep! Outside there stands a sheep With four white feet, That drinks its milk so sweet. Sleep, baby, sleep!" The old English cradle rhyme, evidently written to comfort fathers more than babies, is given by way of contrast, and, as is usual with our own countrymen, the versification is thoroughly British, slurred over and slovenly-- "Hush thee, my babby, Lie still with thy daddy, Thy mammy has gone to the mill To grind thee some wheat To make thee some meat, Oh, my dear babby, do lie still!" The Danish lullaby of "Sweetly sleep, my little child, Lie quiet and still. The bird nests in the wood, The flower rests in the meadow grass; Sweetly sleep, my little child." This last recalls the esteem our Teuton ancestors had for their scalds, or polishers of language, when poetry and music were linked together by the voice and harp of minstrelsy, and when the divine right to fill the office of bard meant the divine faculty to invent a few heroic stanzas to meet a dramatic occasion. One more well-known British lullaby-- "Bye, baby bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting To get a little _hare skin_ To wrap the baby bunting in." The more modern version gives "_rabbit skin_." FOOTNOTES: [B] _Times'_ report, February 10th, 1897. [C] F. SPIEGEL. [D] WELCKER, _Griechische Götterlehre_, i. 551. [E] TYLOR. [F] Wagner introduced the music to which it is sung in his _Siegfried_ idyll. CHAPTER IV. "One very dark night, when the goblins' light Was as long and as white as a feather, A fairy spirit bade me stray Amongst the gorse and heather. The pixies' glee enamoured me, They were as merry as merry could be. "They held in each hand a gold rope of sand, To every blue-bell that grew in the dell They tied a strand, Then the fairies and pixies and goblins and elves Danced to the music of the bells By themselves, merry, merry little selves."