Bye Baby

LIAM IN HIS BUNTING OR IS HE THE BUNTING?

Liam ended up under my shawl, head on pillow.  Pooch on Pillow is Liam's doing.  Shawl on slumbering dog is his Daddy's doing.  I looked and a rhyme popped in my head shaken loose by a glass of Cabernet.  I recited  the first verse of a poem that I had not thought of since childhood.

Bye, baby Bunting,

Daddy's gone-a hunting,

Gone to get a rabbit skin

To wrap the baby Bunting in

Liam all bunched up released it from my brain. I'm thinking "the shawl is Bunting" and Daddy is hunting for more.  I remember it as being haunting, pretty and a little scary.  No one's father I knew went hunting for skins to wrap their kids in. And it sure was not comforting the way my mother presented it- a sort of angry indictment and tale of abandonment - I think now that the verse as she used it was a euphemism for "your father is drinking beer in Woodside, he'll be gone for hours since the chances of skinning a rabbit from the bar stool are slim to none." This way she got her anger out and also credit for doing a motherly bedtime story.
Click to listen-only a minute

Here is more history provided by all the wikis out there
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bye,_baby_Bunting

The meaning of baby Bunting seems to have perturbed others. The original meaning is not what I had thought it was.  Bunting is Scottish-an affectionate term for a plump baby-particularly its bottom or "bunt"  Liam-is the bunting and my shawl is the rabbit skin.

I personally think he would love this to be the truth since chasing bunnies is part of the joy of his nightly walk. The following link explains

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/04/1697.html
The same night Liam was wrapped in his "bunting I was reading Joan Didion's memoir "Blue Nights" of grief and regret about her deceased daughter.  I was astonished to find several references to this nursery rhyme in her book. The version of this song as she sang it to her daughter was Bye Baby Bunny, not Bye baby Bunting.  Guess as a writer she knew "the Bunting" was the baby and modernized Bunting to Bunny so her daughter would understand. Its use in Ms. Didion's memoir is poignant and sort of a goodbye.

Probably the rhyme can be whatever one wants it to be. 

Liam is wrapped in his bunting 

No one is going hunting. 

If I have some wine

I may write the last line

Woof, Woof