The lullabies.
Every tune in Hele is traditional or public domain, arranged by us for an 18-note comb. Nothing is licensed from anyone, so nothing can be taken away. Twenty-second recordings of each will play here once the comb is recorded.
Included with the app
Brahms’ Lullaby
Johannes Brahms, 1868 · included
Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4, written for a friend’s newborn son and published in 1868. The most-recorded lullaby in the world, and the one most music boxes ship with.
Twinkle, Twinkle
French, 1761 · included
The tune is “Ah! vous dirai-je, maman”, printed in Paris in 1761. Mozart wrote variations on it; the English words came sixty years later.
Ili-Ili Tulog Anay
Hiligaynon folk, Panay · included
A Visayan lullaby sung by a sibling or aunt while the mother is away at market. Collected in Aklan in 1956 and set down by Priscilla Magdamo. The first tune we chose.
Lullabies pack
Rock-a-bye Baby
Effie Canning, 1886 · Lullabies pack
The tune everyone knows was written in Boston in 1886 by a fifteen-year-old, Effie Canning, to a nursery rhyme already a century old.
Hush, Little Baby
Southern United States folk · Lullabies pack
Collected by Cecil Sharp in the Appalachians in 1918. The mockingbird, the diamond ring and the billy goat, in the order the singer remembers them.
All the Pretty Little Horses
African-American folk · Lullabies pack
An older song than it sounds, first set down in Dorothy Scarborough’s 1925 collection. The horses are the promise; the lullaby is the waiting.
Lavender’s Blue
English, 17th century · Lullabies pack
A broadside ballad from the 1670s, tamed into a nursery song by the 1800s. Dilly, dilly.
Frère Jacques
French, 18th century · Lullabies pack
The round every child learns first. In a music box it plays straight, one voice, which is how it started.
Wiegenlied (Schubert)
Franz Schubert, 1816 · Lullabies pack
Schubert was nineteen. Four bars of melody, repeated, and a lullaby that has outlasted almost everything else written that year.
Midwinter gift
Silent Night
Franz Xaver Gruber, 1818 · Midwinter gift
Written for a guitar because the church organ was broken, Christmas Eve 1818, Oberndorf. In Hele it arrives every December with the Midwinter riders.
Why these and not others
We check every melody against its history before it goes on the comb. Some well-known lullabies are more recent than they sound and still belong to someone; those we leave out, or ask first. Filipino and Japanese lullaby packs are being transcribed from field recordings and archive songbooks, and will be listed here when they are ready.