(I introduced the great American scholar, Leslie Fiedler, in Part I of these essays on children’s music.  My comments are informed by concepts introduced in a graduate course Leslie taught on children’s literature.)

Burl Ives collected and recorded hundreds of folk songs.  To me he is one of the greatest folklorists around.  His high sweet friendly voice is perfect for children’s music.  Released in 1965, although some of the songs are just Burl and his six string, most of the arrangements on this album are very elaborate, played by a full orchestra, with beefy background vocals, typical of almost all the children’s records I owned as a child during the 1950’s.  But the arrangements are eloquently descriptive of the words, the words are innocent and profound and alarming, and the whole thing is carried by the subtlety, sincerity, and silliness of Ives’ singing.  He has such a vast knowledge of folk music that he can draw on dozens of ancient songs from Europe and America that were not originally intended for children, but which are perfectly suited for that purpose.  And if you pay close attention, you will realize he sings, not just about big fat cows and little grey cats, but unrequited love, scary witches, marital strife, poverty, and death – the stuff of the greatest children’s stories and songs.

Ives sings this eerie arrangement of Vachel Lindsay’s poem, “The Moon is the North Wind’s Cookie.”

The Moon’s the North Wind’s cookie.
He bites it, day by day,
Until there’s but a rim of scraps
That crumble all away.

The South Wind is a baker.
He kneads clouds in his den,
And bakes a crisp new moon that . . . greedy
North . . . Wind . . . eats . . . again!

This stunning poem could be a parable of samsara, the reincarnation of souls.  But it is also about goods being consumed and replaced.  Vachel Lindsay was, after all, a twentieth century American.

Leslie Fiedler analyzed the Oz books by L. Frank Baum as archetypal Americana.  Despite all the magic and weirdness and witchery, the core values of the books are entirely commercial and technological.  In the Oz books, one of the most important magical powers turns out to be electricity.  It is mechanical flim flam that makes the Wizard appear to be magical.  Baum was enthralled by the scientific magic of 20th Century America.  Baum, in retrospect, is one of the originators of steam punk.

As Fiedler explained, one of the most explicit expressions of this American idealism in the Oz books is that everything is replaceable and everything can live.  This is a uniquely American value.  The books say over and over that there is no death.  Baum believed in the eternal transmigration of souls.  But in the Oz books, instead of the rebirth of incorporeal souls, we find a completely physical theory of immortality based on the American notions of mass production and replacement of damaged parts.

For example, in The Tin Woodman of Oz, we learn that the Tin Man was once a human – or Ozian – wood cutter named Nick.  He was in love with a Munchkin named Nimmie Annie who was a servant of the Wicked Witch of the East.  The Witch learns of their love and enchants the wood cutter’s ax to chop off parts of Nick’s body.  It is technical the ingenuity of Ku-Klip the tin smith who comes to the rescue.  He replaces each severed limb with one of tin until Nick is entirely made of tin.  Years later, the Tin Man encounters his own severed head in a cupboard.  The head is still alive and is very unpleasant company.  There are few passages in any literature that are more disturbing.

As Oz evolved from one book to the next, Baum eventually envisaged a utopia where no one ever dies, not even severed hunks from people’s bodies.  Oz is a world in which scientifically manufactured goods and commodities are capable of defeating all sorrow and all strife.  Even death.  And so it is with the baker who renews Vachel Lindsay’s eternally reincarnating cookie.

While Burl Ives is associated with Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie and other radical folkies of the 1950’s and early 1960’s, as the arrangements on this record show, he is really a much more main stream entertainer.  Of course it helped that he is white, which is why I don’t remember seeing Ella Jenkins doing children’s songs on TV from that period.  Throughout my entire childhood, I can count on one finger the number of times I saw Pete Seeger on television:  when he sang “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers Show and, as a consequence, was blacklisted from TV for decades.  I don’t know how many times, growing up, I watched Ives on television; he was a perennial presence.  Moreover Ives is an accomplished Hollywood movie actor, even winning an Academy Award as supporting actor in the movie Big Country.

And did he suck up to the House Unamerican Activities Committee?  Pete Seeger thought so.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t change the greatness of his music.  No one ever has, or ever will, record greater children’s music than Burl Ives.

Vachel Lindsay, Albert M. Hague, “The Moon is the North Wind’s Cookie,”  Publisher not credited, Licensing Agency not credited (1965).  From:  Burl Ives, The Lollypop Tree:  Burl Ives Sings Folk Songs for Children, Harmony Records, XLP 79724 (1965).  Cover Art: unknown.

There is a fierceness about Pete Seeger’s children’s songs that you don’t hear in the friendly voices of Ella Jenkins or Burl Ives.  But fierce is good.  Kids cotton to that just as much as they do to songs about poop and pee or flying and cuddling.  Pete Seger is the noisy kid in the children’s music room to whom the stuffy teachers always say shhhhh.

And here’s a song full of everything that children love in a story:  terror, humor, romance, debauchery, gluttony, pathos, cowardice, violence, and death:  “Frog Went A-Courting.”  Frog rides to Miss Mouse, sets her on his knee, and asks her to marry him.  She needs the permission of Uncle Rat, and Rat is delighted and the wedding is arranged.  Rat and the young couple work out details of the wedding.  There are various versions of the wedding but it always ends in disaster.  In Pete’s version Mister Snake eats up the wedding cake, Rufus Grouse dances a wild breakdown, and Angus Slik eats so much he gets sick – how did a gigantic bull get in there any way?  In the end Mister Cat shows up, scares away the Frog and eats Miss Mousie.

Leslie Fiedler stated that the chief catastrophe in fairy tales is being eaten.  Hansel and Grettle, the Three Little Pigs, the Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, and a multitude of other tales deal with this problem.  Children have oral aggression.  Instinct drives them all to bite and they all have to be taught not to bite other people.  There are other torments suffered in fairy tales: starving, exile, being lost, dying, being immobilized.  Why is being eaten so much worse than any of these?  Why is being eaten such a deep fear?  It has something to do with hopelessness.  As long as you have a body, you still have a chance.  In fairy tales, even dead bodies can be brought back to life.  But when your body is destroyed all hope is lost.  But Leslie argued that the fear of being cannibalized plumbs even more primordial depths.

Fairy tales deal with the family, not class conflict, not political structure, not religious salvation.  And the happiest ending in fairy tales is getting married and starting a new family.  Happiness does not lie in being virtuous, loving god, being strong, or even being wealthy.  Fairy tale happiness is characterized by marriage, having children, carrying on the cycle of human life.

But marriage also has the virtue of being a way of leaving home, getting away from the parents.  Because, in fairy tales, there is always a problem associated with the parents.  Parent figures are usually the creatures who stop marriage, who stop the cycle of life, either through weakness or wickedness.  The best way to stop someone from marrying, is to incorporate them, to eat them.  In fairy tales true love is thwarted in numerous ways: by being eaten, like the boy in “The Juniper Tree,” being paralyzed like Sleeping Beauty, being poisoned like Snow White, being imprisoned like Rapunzel.  It is usually the wicked mother figure who keeps the child from going out into the world and finding love.  And it is usually the father figure who is too weak to do anything about it.

This is a nightmare that must be broken.  Life has to go on.  The young must marry the young.  The old must yield to the young.  Fortunately the young are not without resources.  There is usually a beneficent person:  a wise and mysterious person, usually ancient or ageless:  a grandmother, the wise old man in the woods, a magical being.  They tell stories and reveal secrets to the children, articulate their deepest fears, and reveal their unconscious dreams.  The magical benefactor helps the child solve riddles, reveals to the child strength she does not know she possesses, gives her a magic object, socializes the child to marry and have children, all against the wishes of the parents.  The evil magic is undone when a suitable lover comes along.  The impediment, the cannibalism, the incorporation, fails.  Fairy tale children and grandparents get along because they have a common enemy: the parents.

The happy ending results in the establishment of a healthy family.  Either the victimized child escapes and marries her true love, or the children band together against the weak father and wicked step mother, the mother is killed, and the father and children form a new family.

“Frog Went A-Courting” is a very old song, imported from Europe.  Just when the happy ending should occur in a fairy tale, the worst possible catastrophe occurs.  Not only is the marriage unfulfilled, but the bride is eaten.  It is a very sad tale, humorously told, of unrequited love caused by the death of the bride at her wedding.  And it endures to this day because it resonates in the primordial family issues identified by Leslie Fiedler.  Tragedy always inspires humor.  It is easy to imagine how some real life wedding misfortune was transformed into a jocular ballad and sung down through the ages, the original sorrow utterly lost.

Traditional, “Frog Went A-Courting,” No publisher (1955).  From Pete Seeger, Birds Beasts Bugs and Little Fishes: Animal Folk Songs Sung by Pete Seeger, Folkways Records, FCS 7610 (1968).  Album Art – Maggie MacGowan.