Italian Nursery Rhymes: A Rich, Varied, and Well-Used Landscape

While the Anglo-Saxon tradition is encapsulated in the corpus of nursery rhymes called Mother Goose, Italy presents a greater variety of traditional nursery rhymes. Even the naming conventions used for these nursery rhymes show the difficulty in distinguishing between the various genres. Folklore experts, who have been collecting the greater part of regional Italian folktales and poetry from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, have coined the following definitions: "minor folk literature," "children's folklore," "children's life," and "children's games and pleasantries." The terms most commonly used today are: ninne nanne, nenie or cantilene (lullabies or singsongs), when they are intended to make a baby go to sleep; tiritere and filastrocche (nursery rhymes), when they are used by adults to entertain children; conte and filastrocche (counting rhymes), for pieces invented by children and used to count out, jump rope or as part of their games.

But within these same genres, there is an even greater regional variety, due to the use of local themes, structure and references, as seen in the traditional fables collected in Italy's twenty regions. As an example, in the region of Abruzzo, one of the more common themes is that of the flock of sheep led to the base of the mountain to graze and the fear the shepherds have of losing them to wolves that inhabit the area, as in the following piece:

Fate la nanna che è passato il lupo
Le meglio pecorelle s'è mangiato
Ma puccettino mio non l'ha veduto
Fate la nanna che è passato il lupo.
(Gandini, Filastrocche 169)

[Sleep tight, the wolf has gone by,
The most tender sheep he's eaten, wherever he's been
But my darling he hasn't seen it
Sleep tight, the wolf has gone by]

In this lullaby from Apulia, the baby is entrusted to Saint Nicholas:

Santo Nicola mja
Addormisci lo ninnillo mia
E suonno quando venia
Viene la notte no viene lo dia.
(Gandini, Ambarabà 28)

[My Saint Nicholas,
Lead my little baby to sleep,
And when sleep finally comes
Make it come during the night, not during the day.]

In Grado, the topic is life at sea:

Dormi bel figio
Che to pare pesca
E zozo in mar
Co' l'inzegno e l'esca
El pensa a 'l to magnar (25)

[Sleep my beautiful son,
Your father's gone fishing
And roams the sea
With bait and with hook
So he can make sure you'll be eating]

In this overview, I shall start with the traditional Italian nursery rhyme's essential characteristic as an instrument that furthers communication between children and their parents. Then, I shall attempt to trace its history, analyzing its evolution in the twentieth century and how, in recent history, these pieces have been accepted, collected or pushed aside and neglected. Finally, I shall analyze some specific genres that have influenced children's literature in Italy: lullabies, nursery rhymes for infants, and counting rhymes, which are used by children for selecting players in a game. ¹

Communication and Relationships: Maybe the Nursery Rhymes . . .

Na, na, na         Pite, pitelle
mamma lu tene e lu vo' cantà
Nina', nina', pipin cadai . . .         Totò, totò, mosseta

This playful repetition of syllables and sounds represents the beginnings of verbal interaction between mother and child and an early stage of the development of language. One hypothesis is that the musical and poetic forms developed in a specific culture stem directly from our need to communicate our emotions dynamically, and that this ability is inborn. ² It is significant, in fact, that newborns are soon able to actively participate in the communication of sounds during moments of intimate exchange with attentive adults. This ability permits the child to perceive the parents' communicative signals and, at the same time, to elicit them.

The mother usually starts this form of communication by...