Choosing a gift for a new baby can be tricky business – what if someone else buys them the same thing?
This isn’t something Marie-Louise Napier, from Grantown-on-Spey, worries about, as her gifts are a little more special.
“My mother always sang us lullabies, we sang all the time when we were young,” she said.
“When family or people I was very fond of had babies, I would write a lullaby for them.
“I based them on their names after researching them, using the rhythm and incorporating hushabyes and lullabies.
“My second grandchild is called Esther, which I discovered means star, so that turned into ‘Esther you’re our little star, you’re our star that’s what you are’.
“Brooke became a bubbling brook, the first Noah made a big boat so my Noah needed to get on the sleepy boat.”
Over the years, the 73-year-old has written 15 lullabies for grandchildren, great nieces, cousins’ children and friends’ children.
Now she is sharing them with the world on her new CD: Lullaby Nana.
The first lullaby
The tradition of welcoming new babies with a personalised lullaby started with one special baby on Mull around 12 years ago.
Marie-Louise said: “My sister lives on the island and she knew someone who had had a very premature baby, Coll.
“She phoned me up and said she needed a special gift for the baby, she said ‘why don’t you write a lullaby?’
“I wrote the words and sent it to them, then a few years later when I had my first grandchild I thought I must do it for her, for Lucy.”
The children who are lucky enough to have their own lullaby hold them dearly.
“They’re really chuffed that it’s their song, to the degree that my oldest grandchild had to have the lullaby every night before she went to sleep,” said Marie-Louise.
“One babysitter had a total panic when she was told she wasn’t singing it right, so she had to phone her boyfriend who was a musician to read the music for her.”
Each track on the Lullaby Nana CD is paired with a short introduction, telling listeners who the song was originally written for.
Creating Lullaby Nana
“It was my son Hamish, he came in one day when I was putting the finishing touches on one of the last ones I wrote and asked how many I had,” she said.
“He said it was enough for a CD and that I should record them sometime, then he came back the next day and said ‘I’ve booked you in with Iain MacFarlane at the Old Laundry Studio in Glenfinnan during the last week of May. This was at the start of May!”
The time pressure helped Marie-Louise click into focus mode, writing out sheet music for songs and melodies that had only existed in her head.
This wasn’t too challenging given her musical background.
“I was a musician, I studied and taught music and did a lot of singing in my youth,” said Marie-Louise.
“My grandfather would walk me up the high street in Grantown and say ‘this is my granddaughter Marie, she’s got a lovely voice’.
“I learned to play piano – badly – from an early age. My brother is a piper; my sister and I got together later in life and did a show at the Edinburgh festival, No Spring Chickens, we all have music in us.
“I don’t often write down music unless I need to, but once I got started with the lullabies they just flowed.”
Marie-Louise is also an accomplished clarsach player and performs the accompaniment on Lullaby Nana.
Preserving lullabies
The Lullaby Nana CD comes along with a book, drawing from the fact Marie-Louise did a painting along to match each of her lullabies as she wrote them.
Designer Elly Lucas has helped her create the book, adding the sheet music, illustrations and photographs from the family’s archives to bring each lullaby to life.
Marie-Louise hopes Lullaby Nana will help preserve the tradition of singing lullabies to children, which she fears is becoming less common.
“I would love for it to make people sing to their children and sing with them,” she said.
“It used to be an easy way of interacting with your child, but nowadays people don’t do that. People think ‘oh I can’t sing’, but it doesn’t matter, your child will think you are lovely and accept you as you are.”
Though the lullabies are personal, Marie-Louise feels excited to share them with the world.
“Whenever you produce something there is that nervous feeling,” she said.
“I hope they aren’t too personal to be interesting to other people. It’s nice to think that people might find one they really like and adapt it to their own child.”
Lullaby Nana will be released on CD and digital platforms on May 12, but is available to pre-order now.
Find out more at linktr.ee/lullabynana
Conversation