Baloo Baleerie

Baloo Baleerie is a Scottish Lullaby. The title is alliterative nonsense based around the Scots word for lullaby, "baloo". As it is based on a recording in the BBC Glasgow Archives made on January 22, 1949 on the Shetland island of Bressay, it is also known as "The Bressay Lullaby",.

It was first published in 1951 by Alan Lomax. An English version, "Go Away, Little Fairies" has also been published.

Lyrics

The first verse refers to the story of the changeling, whereby a fairy would secretly substitute its own offspring for an unguarded human baby. In the first verse, the fairies are told to leave, while in the second verse, guardian angels are asked to protect the child. The third verse advises the child to sleep softly.

References

Baloo

Baloo (Hindi: भालू Bhālū, "bear") is a main fictional character featured in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book from 1894 and The Second Jungle Book from 1895. Baloo, a bear, and Bagheera, a panther, save Mowgli from Shere Khan the tiger, and endeavor to teach Mowgli the Law of the Jungle in many of the stories of the Jungle Book.

Name and species

He is described in Kipling's work as "the sleepy brown bear". Robert Armitage Sterndale, from whom Kipling derived most of his knowledge of Indian fauna, used the Hindi word "Bhalu" for several bear species, though Daniel Karlin, who edited the Penguin reissue of The Jungle Book in 1989, states that, with the exception of colour, Kipling's descriptions of Baloo are consistent with the sloth bear, as brown bears and Asian black bears do not occur in the Seoni area where the novel takes place. Also, the name sloth can be used in the context of sleepiness. Karlin states, however, that Baloo's diet of "... only roots and nuts and honey" is a trait more common to the Asian black bear than to the sloth bear. Nevertheless, this may be single observation only; we know from the dietary habits of sloth bears that while sloth bears mainly prefer termites and ants (which is also described as Baloo's special treat in The Jungle Book), their main sources of food are honey and fruits most of the year.