“Lullabies for Maniacs”?

While browsing and poking around over at The Poetry Foundation website, I came across an older article (2010) about the singer/songwriter Natalie Merchant. She had just come out with a 2-cd set of children’s poems set to music. The title of the article (“Lullabies for Maniacs”) plays on the fact that Merchant once was lead singer for the band 10,000 Maniacs. But for the cd in question, titled Leave Your Sleep, the songwriter did a deep dive into 19th and 20th-century children’s ditties, nursery rhymes, lullabies, and nonsense poems that her own daughter responded to, picking out some verses written by well-known poets like Robert Graves and Robert Louis Stevenson, some by uncelebrated authors, and others by the ubiquitous (especially in rhymes for children) “Anonymous.”

Here’s one Merchant set to music:

‘maggy and milly and molly and may’

maggy and milly and molly and may 
went down to the beach(to play one day) 

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and 

milly befriended a stranded star 
whose rays five languid fingers were; 

and molly was chased by a horrible thing 
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and 

may came home with a smooth round stone 
as small as a world and as large as alone. 

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 
its always ourselves we find in the sea 

E. E. Cummings

The 2-disc set is still available at Amazon. I’m not trying to hawk the cd here, so I’ll just copy and paste the list of tracks – and when you have time, you might want to use it as a list of poems you can look up for fun.  [Added note: Do not miss the video of the Ted Talk performance where Merchant sings many of these poem-songs, including “maggy and milly….” Click here for the link to it . ]

Track Listings

Disc: 1

  1. Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience

  2. Equestrienne

  3. Calico Pie

  4. Bleezer’s Ice-Cream

  5. It Makes a Change

  6. The King of China’s Daughter

  7. The Dancing Bear

  8. The Man in the Wilderness

  9. maggie and milly and molly and may

  10. If No One Ever Marries Me

  11. The Sleepy Giant

  12. The Peppery Man

  13. The Blind Men and the Elephant

Disc: 2

  1. Adventures of Isabel

  2. The Walloping Window Blind

  3. Topsyturvey-World

  4. The Janitor’s Boy

  5. Griselda

  6. The Land of Nod

  7. Vain and Careless

  8. Crying, My Little One

  9. Sweet and a Lullaby

  10. I Saw a Ship A-Sailing

  11. Autumn Lullaby

  12. Spring and Fall: To a Young Child
  13. Indian Names

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by Karen Edmisten. Head over to her blog to see what other people have posted.