Lullabies, language analysis and features

This paper seeks to analyze the lullabies – the folkloric creativity dedicated to children, which comes naturally through the mother’s mouth to the child. The lullabies under consideration have become part of the literary analysis about the meter, verse, literary figures as well as any particular characteristics by the provinces they come from, wanting to highlight and discover the psychological and emotional world that the mother has expressed through the verses. for the child. Epithets, comparisons, metaphors, alliterations, etc., and the approximation in the selection of stylistic figures make us think that this is the result of the commonality of the mother’s perceptions of the world around her. The presented materials come as comprehensive research, capturing creations from various regions of Albania and are part of folklore creations for children. As such, they constitute an indisputable wealth for the Albanian oral folklore and a national treasure that must be identified, conserved, used and transmitted to current and future generations.


Introduction
Lullabies are defined as universal language and communication between a mother and her child.The first lullaby is documented 4000 thousand years ago by a Babylonian.Dating back to around 2000 BC, this lullaby is found engraved on a small clay tablet and is thought to be one of the earliest lullabies in the world (Dumbrill, R. 2019).Even though it is a lullaby, the message it conveys is by no means sweet.English scholar (the lullaby discovered by him is part of the British Museum) explains that the writing used in this lullaby is cuneiform.This type of writing, as one of the earliest forms of writing, originated in Babylon and refers to the triangular mark left from the stick used to write on wet clay.
In Albanian folklore, cradle songs or lullabies are considered part of popular creativity for children and part of the cycle of individual and family life, which were shaped as a separate species.We say this because lullabies are the first artistic signals of life, which affect the world of the child, although the little one does not understand the words, but the sweetness of the sound and the closeness of the mother.In the encyclopedia of Albanian folk music, written by (Tole, V. 2001), we encounter two names for this type of creativity.The first name, cradle song, is quite common and we find it almost all over Albania, while the other name, according to this source, nina -nana, is explained by the argument that they are folk songs sung to children in the cradle.Baby songs is another name offered by the same encyclopedia, which we find used in Podgur, Kosovo, while the other very interesting name, luli lulat, is used by the Albanians of Macedonia, i.e. cradle songs, folk songs with a voice sung to children up to the age of one.(Hala, M. 2015) Lullabies are meant to put the baby to sleep, which is accompanied by feelings of love, sweetness, and care for the baby.The research of the lullabies and the comparison between them clearly shows the emotional world of the young mother and the woman in general, which conveys through singing meaningful messages to her child.The mother's desire to communicate artistically with her child emerges very clearly through the message and the literary and musical elements.These messages aim not only at communicating with the child, but also at the mother's desire to project her child into the future, into family and society, with the best features and values of life.Generally, when singing lullabies, women use the same tone of voice and the same way of singing.
We also encounter this phenomenon in terms of musical rhythm, where it naturally happens that even when the mother does not sing, she speaks to her child musically, where the notes and endings of the words go up and down and have a clear rhythm.The baby responds to this rhythm, with the cooing and gestures that often coincide with the time or percussion of the sounds that the mother sings.It is this reciprocal relationship between mother and child that resembles a dialogue between them.According to Palestinian singer Reem Kelani (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21035103#panel1), Singing lullabies "is one of the universal things…, it's like the umbilical cord, and that's the extraordinary power of the bedtime lullaby." The melody of the lullabies, created by the mother herself, best shows how the two very important elements are united and harmonized within her in unity: music and text.
A lullaby conveys a warm lyricism, through the universal feeling of mother's love for the child.This lyric begins with Nina-nana which is the cliché entry of all lullabies in general.The emotional charge of lullabies is carried by the special individual way of execution by the mother, a woman who presents us with a rich spiritual world and with numerous moral values.She is willing to sacrifice, showing the greatest love and care for her children.To her, the child is sacred, whether boy or girl, and each mother has her own way of expressing feelings and wishes.We often find the mother singing to the girl, not sparing a comparison her for, the basis of which is taken by nature with infinite beauties.The comparison as a bud serves to emphasize the delicacy, freshness, and beauty of the girl, while the metaphor of red-cheeked expresses the mother's desire for the girl to be healthy.Another element that we notice in lullabies is sleep, which for the mother means peace, health, kindness, growth of the child.We also find the Albanian mother's (Calabria, in Sud Italia), who expresses her love for her creature through the desire for the child to sleep long, because sleep is health, expressing this through 'may sleep overwhelm you' metaphor.The mother also expresses the biological connection with the child through the pronoun Ima (my son) and breastfeeding.The mother, in addition to love, gives the child security, which is essential for his healthy growth.

Linguistic Organization of Lullaby and Predominant Elements in Verses
The rites that have accompanied the birth of the child, as a symbol of the continuity of life, have aroused the curiosity to study not only the rituals dedicated to birth as a phenomenon in itself, but also the relationship that the mother created with her baby after birth.The approach to popular creativity dedicated to the birth of a child distinguishes three main moments.They are: • the period before the birth of the baby, • the birth of the baby, • the period after the birth of the baby.
All these three moments are accompanied by creations of various formal, ideological and emotional features, where the most interesting ones include lullabies that belong to the third period which is part of this paper.In the lullabies, the new mother sings to the newborn baby to put him to sleep.Hence, there are often verses where sleep is called to come and catch the baby:  1990, 4, pg 340 -343.)Enumeration is one of the found ways through which the concretization of the mother's wishes is realized.Full of varied facts and details are borrowed from reality and numbered in the lullaby verses, to make it as tangible as possible.For example: (Eng) Sleep, my son, and grow up, / grow up to become a man, / to beat the Turks and infidels, / wear a dress and sleeveless coat, / take your gun and the yatagan, / wear a scull-cap and waistbands, / embroidered with silver slaps, / with leather moccasins, / ordered in Ioannina) ... (Përmet).
Here, through details, the mother visualizes the image of a brave man in verses, as she wants her sons to become in the future.She arranges all these features one after the other with great mastery in order for the verse to sound as beautiful as possible.
Inversion, as a very important means of expression, is used in lullabies to create stylistic and semantic effects within them.Breaking the normal syntactic order of the limbs (subject + predicate + second part of the sentence) makes it possible to emphasize the specific parts which the attention of the lullaby listener should be paid to.Precisely for this reason, the syntactic construction of the verses depends on the expressive, semantic, and intonational intentions of the lullaby maker.For example: For example: (Eng) Nina -nana, oh boy, let me finish thy cloth bag, let me load the bag on thy shoulder, make it shine under sunrays.)Pristina, Kosovo, (Folks lirics. 1990, 4, p 617).
(Eng) Nina -nana, in a wooden cradle, may you be brave like Bajram Curri, fight like Bajram Curri the rifle in thy hand, do not let the enemy escape.
We see how in the above examples the mother has avoided the normal order of the sentence parts by giving more expressive force to the words: rifle / enemy / cloth bag/ sunshine.Here the semantic side of the lullaby is strengthened.
Wishes and aspirations are the substance that intertwines all lullabies, giving them a family character, close and understandable.Precisely for this reason, lullabies, regardless of the area from which they are identified, resemble with one another and have much in common.In some cases, they can be considered synonymous variants of each other.Numerous are the points where the lullabies converge.One of them is also the stylistic wealth.The approximation in the selection of stylistic figures makes us think that this is the result of the common perception of the world around them, but also the result of direct actions on it and, consequently, of similar experiences.If we were to start from the analysis of epithet and comparison, as the most encountered figures in lullabies, we would notice a wide variety.If we were to classify them according to their origin, we would distinguish designations of origin: • from livestock and zoology, • from agriculture, • from astronomy, • from the field of precious stones and metals, • from mythological figures.
We think this classification comes as a result of the mother's life.Given that the majority of the Albanian population once lived in villages, it is easy to conclude that the connection between them and nature would be stronger, so even in these lullabies references to the village are more frequent.Referring to the above classification, the following findings prove this at best: (  (Daja, F. 1982) Other stylistic figures used in lullabies are also of great interest.Rhetorical question is a frequent component in them.It organizes the thought and realizes a kind of inner monologue of the mother.Apparently, the mother needs the conversation with her son to feel closer to him.Often, these questions have an implied answer, so one is not given.While in other cases, the lullaby itself comes as a monologue built on the basis of some questions and answers which help express wishes for the baby's future.Let us see them separately: (Eng) (Nano -nano, ri -ri -ri, / who  Hajde xhuma, ma merr me t'shpejtë, / Merre vrap e bjerma prap, / mos ma nal, po dy sahat, / merrma kij e berma dash, e ka nana për merak!(Daja, F. 1982) If each question gets an answer in the first lullaby, in the second one the three rhetorical questions are placed one after the other at the beginning of the lullaby, almost structurally separated from the rest of the creation without waiting for an answer, because, as mentioned above, their answer is easily understood.In lullabies, the mother not only addresses the baby as her constant interlocutor, but occasionally she also talks to the sleep or cradle.In the last example presented above, the mother addresses sleep.From this point of view, we notice how these objects take on a new function and new qualities.They become the embodiment of comfort, tranquility, good health and protector of the child.But there are also cases when oversleeping for the mother is a symbol of evil and death.
For example: (Eng) Wake up, my daughter, you slept enough, / That, God forbid, you look like dead stuff, / like lifeless stuff -restin' in peace, / In eternal sleep -going to cease.
The use of personification in lullabies, through which sleep and cradle become close, tangible and almost alive, highlights the artistic character of these folk creations.
Stylistic figures, such as metaphor and metonymy, are seldom encountered in lullabies.As figures that are built based on shifting the first meaning of the word and placing them in another, figurative meaning, they have not found the right ground to become part of popular creativity.Based on a general analysis of popular creations, and in particular lullabies, we can say that the people have avoided figurative language and preferred to be direct, clear, open, and concise, avoiding ambiguity.Since lullabies were mainly creations of mothers, sisters, or grandmothers, they belong to a lower intellectual level and, precisely for this reason, they contain concrete references from everyday life, far from being abstract.The metaphorical use of lullabies conveys optimistic thinking, boundless parental love, boundless dreams of becoming the best baby, the most hardworking, the first of the clan or the country, like the most prominent of the country.The language of metaphors expresses not only the joy of the mother for the birth of the child, but also the whole house.E.g.: (

Lullaby Rhythmic Organization, types of Verse, Stanza, Rhyme
Formally, the lullabies have some characteristic features.The most obvious feature that can be easily noticed is their external construction.They range from four-string lullabies to the longest eighty-five-string lullabies, such as the one titled "O, O, O Mary Arjeta" (Folk lyrics, 1990) These data are confirmed by the authors of this text.).If we were to make regional generalizations based on this feature, we would say that the lullabies of the South of Albania, in relation to the Lullabies of the North, are generally shorter.Usually, they are not divided into stanzas, but have the form of a monocolon, yet within them the logical flow of thought is interrupted several times, making thus an artificial division out of it.These divisions are made through onomatopoeic formulations which are repeated in the form of a refrain whenever a new wish appears in the lullaby.
Specifically, the following verses introduce some wishes, which are divided through the verses that are repeated 'nano -nano, little son; climbing the stairs on', a verse which is sung three times, while a fourth time the division is realized through the sound-limiting verse: 'oriri, oriri' .These repetitive verses divide the lullaby into 4 stanzas.Each of them speaks about four different desires of the mother.Respectively: • the first expresses her care that her son does not get hurt.
• the second expresses her wish to take her son to school.
• the third, mother wants her son to fall asleep.
• the fourth one states the aspiration of financial success from her son's future job.
(Eng) Nano -nano, little son, / climbing the stairs on, / Watch out that he's not hurt, / he is little, he can't grow up.
*** (Eng) Oriri, oriri, / he his little, he can't read, I will take him to school, / he can learn grammar.
To make the lullaby text as intriguing as possible, the mother immediately creates words which best imitate the knocking of the cradle, the buzzing of bees as in the above cases.This makes the creation more diverse, but it also better concretizes the idea of the mother.
A repetition of the same word at the beginning of verses, anaphora is a very important organizing component in lullabies.This way of constructing verses gives semantic importance to this word and strengthens the expressive side of the lullaby.
In the examples below we see how the mother addresses the girl by the name of a flower, a detail that is repeated at the beginning of each verse.The repetition not only emphasizes the resemblance the baby has to the flower, but it also arranges the rhyme within the lullaby.The same function applies to the repetition of the exclamation hoy in the second lullaby and ani in the third.
Many other elements, such as the number of verses and syllables, are used to create the melodic line or rhythm within folk poetry.The number of syllables in the verses within the lullabies varies depending on the thought that is expressed, especially in function of its sound realization.Thus, we encounter lullabies with equal number of syllables, but also lullabies where the syllable construction of the verse is different.
The 'Nina -nana' lullaby took a little bit of four-string strings, realizing a melodic rhythm 2/4, which resembles the knock of a rocking cradle.
( Example of how the rhythm 2/4 comes through the syllable of the word:

ni -na -na -na -mo -ri -çi -kë / lu -tna -zo -tit -me -m'u -rri -të / lu -mja -na -na -qi -po -m'rri -tesh etj.
We can say that within the same verse we find accents that are repeated according to an equal number of syllables.Since the accents fall on syllables 1, 3, 5, 7, we conclude that the mother used the trochaic verse.
3 Each verse is repeated twice.Generally, the language of lullabies is concentrated, laconic.The absence of the predicate in some cases as well as the numerous repetitions bring few ideas, if for the mother they are really important.In the following lullaby, the mother lays out the main idea: The bride to be carefully chosen.
The bride must have several specific characteristics, to fetch water and make firewood, i.e., so the bride must be strong, healthy and hardworking.
The whole lullaby is built on four main verbs, which are: to get, to fill, to fetch, and to want.Judging by their number, we can say that four verbs are little in relation to the number of verses as a whole.So, the mother, as the creator of these verses, has concentrated the whole philosophy of way of life in so few actions.If we look at the way in which the short forms of the personal pronouns me, he and she with the verbs are reported, we come to the conclusion that: two of these verbs are addressed to the bride, who must fill and bring; the other two verbs are intended for the mother, who will get and want.This analysis highlights the mentality of the mother of the son and the mother-inlaw at the same time of the then Albania, according to which the bride was basically considered in terms of the man she serves to, who supports the family in the chores of daily life.She was not seen simply for her beauty, so she was required to be strong and healthy, because only then could she cope with the difficult life of the village.
(Eng) Hooray -hooray, my son -o, Get him a spouse, it's done -o, A joyful lass by the stream, Will be my son's wife of dream, Fill the jug to the brim, From the best water gleam, And firewood in many a ream, Fetch for me it does seem, Want all for my esteem.
approximated to each other.One of the points that brings the lullabies closer is the stylistic richness.The approximation in the selection of stylistic figures makes us think that this is the result of the common perception of the world around them, but also the result of direct actions on it and, consequently, of similar experiences.
Since this type has the child as the subject, the figures used are almost the same.Such are the epithet and the comparison, or the metaphor where the aesthetic feeling and the desire to express oneself are not missing from the mother while singing.
While rhetorical questions are another common and integral part of lullabies, organizing thought and realizing a kind of internal monologue in the mother, which addresses not only the baby as her constant interlocutor, but sometimes also sleep, or cradle.The use of assonance, as a literary figure that names the phenomenon of repetition of the same vowel within the same verse, appears dense in lullabies.Generally, the language of lullabies is concentrated, laconic, while in terms of stanzas they are constructed with four verses up to the longest lullaby with eighty-five verses.
The lullabies of the South of Albania, in relation to the Lullabies of the North, are generally shorter.The repetition of verses within the lullabies is a deliberate selection in view of the idea of putting the child to sleep.In lullabies we also find different typologies of verses; broken verses are used by the creator who selects to identify one of the stanzas which he seeks to give more value, while rhymes are a distinctive feature of lullabies.It is rare for strings of lullabies to be without rhyme.They are generally characterized by matching rhymes.However, we also find rhyme combinations within the same lullaby.In these cases, we have the combination of the matching rhyme with the closed rhyme.

eagle in the blue sky, / o star full of beauty
Eng) You pretty rose, / may you become the best among friends.You are a dove, you are a swallow, / may you never see evil.Sleep, son of the mother, sleep, / you (Eng) Sleep on, sleep on, my Freedom, / a cradle embroidered with stars.(Alb)Fli e fli, Liria ime, Djep qëndisura me yje.Velça -Vlora, (Folks lirics.1990,  4, p. 349