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TEASING CHANTS
Children's lore can be regarded as a phenomenon
occupying a transitional position between the spoken and sung forms of
folklore. Its tunes, with the exception of shepherds' songs, have undergone
very slight changes, and there exist a lot of variants of the same type
that are sung in one area and recited in another. Yet, all of them demonstrate
a tendency to rhyme and to put a witty saying into a rhythmic form. Most
of the genres of children's lore, e.g. shepherd trill, addresses to the
sun or rain, magic chants, some counting-out rhymes, once related to traditional
religious or magic beliefs, were redone by children later. In contrast
to adults, children created their songs on the spot, with immediate improvisations
- the feature which can also be attributed to teasing chants. The latter
genre is represented by addresses directed to close friends, adults, animals.
They were performed by teenagers, mainly shepherds, whose loud shouting
was accompanied by mimicking gestures.
Teasing chants can be subdivided into
several groups according to the intentions of their verse, which include:
mocking at bad habits, making fun of names, mocking at other shepherds
or animals. The chants meant for making fun of names comprise the most
numerous group and are characterised by extremely drastic themes. Another
group, including the chants meant to mock at shepherds, is related to work
and other activities or games shepherds were engaged in. Teasing chants
meant for making fun of birds or animals contain a lot of mimicking. In
these chants, the most common addressee is the stork. Traditionally, this
bird has been allotted a very special place in Lithuanian customs, related
to peoples' beliefs, superstitions, weather predictions, etc. It was maintained,
that the stork would bring fortune to the homestead where its nest had
been made. Children used to believe and some still keep believing that
the stork can bring a baby brother or sister from a pond or a river. The
song Gandrai gandrai, ga ga ga ("You stork, you stork, ga ga ga")
[mp3]
is very popular in Eastern Aukðtaitija. Actually, it tells not about
the stork, but about his wife - a bad witch, who did not give a bun to
a child. Such songs chiefly were created and performed by shepherds, and
their tunes did not range widely. Nowadays, teasing chants addressed to
the stork have a number of versions in Aukðtaitija, Dzûkija and
Þemaitija, where the stork is called different names: busilas,
starkus, bacënas, etc. In teasing chants, like in children's folklore
of other kinds, melodic organisation of the stanza, especially the rhythm
and the rhyme, play a very important role. Meaningful elements are usually
suppressed by numerous puns, sound peculiarities, rhythm. A word is simply
"stuck" to the stanza in order to make it sound better; therefore, teasing
chants seem to be well-filled with all kinds of meaningless but clearly
heard word couples, which makes a great impression on children. All the
tunes typical of teasing chants tend not to vary a lot, and mostly are
characterised by an astrophic, recitative form, narrow range, imitative,
shouting intonations, and particularly accentuated rhythm.
As compared to other genres of children's
folklore, including lullabies, amusements, animal descriptions, formula
songs, the records of the tunes of teasing chants make up the smallest
group. This probably was determined by the conditions of their existence
as well as by their original intention. In fact, the same teasing chant
used to be sung in one place, whereas somewhere else only its rhymed verse
was recited.
With the loss of their original intention
and their natural surroundings, children's songs started to disappear at
an alarming rate. Fortunately, having acquired new forms of existence,
they are undergoing kind of revival today.
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