GENRE IDENTIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION is a problem much discussed by folklorists in recent years. Ultimately it is probably an unsolvable one, but-as in the fairy tales-the quest is likely the most interesting part of the story, for it leads one into intellectual confrontations with anomalies that one would otherwise probably avoid. Some years ago, hearing of my interest in children's song, a young woman in her late twenties introduced herself to me and said that she had been brought up in Chicago and that her mother, a young widow, had sung her to sleep every night with the same song. And then, with the most extraordinary mixture of emotions on her face-half genuine sentimental reverie, half self-conscious amusementshe sang me what she herself identified as a funny kind of lullaby: