Husherbye

Sung all round the world to lull children to sleep, lullabies, as Marina Warner points out in her seminal study of the cultural ways we have to keep the bogies at bay (No Go the Bogeyman, Chatto & Windus), 'imply two narratives at least: the relationship of the singer to the child and, within the words - and to some extent in the melody as well - another story'.

In Burningham's Husherbye additional narratives abound in the illustrations to his workpersonlike, quirky attempts at verse ('The baby's been sailing a boat on the sea, /and now needs to sleep./HUSHERBYE'). An exhausted mother cat trudges through the snow with her sleepy kittens, three bears, grumpy with tiredness, climb the stairs, the serene man in the moon is beginning to doze off. Sleep in this lullaby is sometimes a blissful state of consciousnessless ('The baby's asleep/in the boat that's afloat,/and is rocking on watery waves.') but more often a desperately needed sinking into oblivion after a difficult and strenuous day. The baby, tucked up in a blanket, bottle in hand, sleeps peacefully in her/his little green boat which floats serenely on a smooth pink sea but the exhausted goose sleeps flat out, slumped in a chair. Not all life, not all sleep then can be simple, easy and blissful, the watcher by the cradle appears to tell us. Just as the baby tumbles down when the bough breaks, so Husherbye, within its comforting, tender, sleep inducing words and pictures, does not, like all the best lullabies, altogether reassure.