The Mother‘s Nursery Songs

The Mother‘s Nursery Songs gathers brief, tuneful verses ed for the earliest moral and emotional education of children within the household. Its literary style is simple, mnemonic, and musical: rhyme, repetition, and devotional sentiment combine to make instruction intimate rather than severe. In the context of nineteenth-century Anglo-American nursery literature, the volume belongs to a tradition that joined domestic affection with Protestant pedagogy, treating song as a formative instrument of character. Thomas Hastings, a major American composer, hymn writer, and advocate for sacred-music reform, was especially fitted to produce such a work. His career was devoted to making music intelligible, morally serious, and useful to ordinary worshippers and families. Known for his influence on church psalmody and musical education, Hastings brought to nursery song the same conviction that melody could cultivate feeling, memory, discipline, and piety from the earliest years. This book is recommended to readers interested in children‘s literature, hymnody, domestic education, and the cultural history of childhood. It will especially reward those who wish to understand how nineteenth-century families imagined music as both tenderness and training.