Estonian Lullaby
Arrangement by Lovisa Liljeberg & Kongero
Teaching Page created 10/2025
Lyrics (see more information below)*
Laula, laula, suukene,
Laula, laula, suukene
liigu, linnukeelekene,
liigu, linnukeelekene
Translation:
Sing now, sing now, lips so dear,
Sing now, sing now, lips so dear
Stir now, song bird’s sweet tongue,
Stir now, song bird’s sweet tongue
Laula – All Voices
Laula – Melody low (starts at :45)
Laula – Descant high (starts at 1:26 with the time prior on melody high)
Laula – Drone (starts at 2:07 with the time prior on melody low after first verse)
Kaitie’s note:
Long term Living Room Choir members may remember this song as we sung it years ago, with the vocables “e dim dim, ah dum dum”. I learned it from Ryk Groetchen, another Bay Area songleader, but he and I only knew that it was an Estonian lullaby and at the time I couldn’t find more information. We are grateful that Patti Powell brought Laula’s words to CCLT and that Sara has taken it and run with the research! This is a great example of the work we do to restore the songs’ origin stories as part of our oral tradition work.
Sara writes:
I learned this song at the Community Choir Leadership Training (CCLT) Summer ’25 reunion. Patti Powell, an amazing CCLT alum who lives in British Columbia, led Laula and shared that she had learned the song from Molly Stone, choral conductor and lecturer at University of Chicago).
As can be the case when trying to source a song from another culture and honor the roots of where the song has come from and the appropriateness of sharing the song, I needed to dig deeper to find out more about the song Laula that is discussed as a lullaby coming from the folk tradition.
The following information may be redundant for some, and may be over-simplified for others, but for myself, it helped me to understand more about Estonian history and the puzzle pieces of the song Laula and its current form.
Estonia is a beautiful small country located on the Baltic Sea. Historically, Estonia’s location and resources became a target of other countries who desired a strategic location for the shipping trade and geographical dominance. Centuries of take-overs and rule (Swedish Empire, Russian Empire, Germanic Empire, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union) with intermittent periods of self-government and eventual liberation and reestablishment of Estonian Government from 1992 onwards greatly impacted the Estonian people and their ability to freely share, express and preserve their culture over the centuries.
There’s a documentary that you can stream called The Singing Revolution (2006) that gives an overview of Estonian history and in particular, documents how important singing was and is to the Estonian people and how they used song to hold on to hope and unite their people to rise up against the Soviet Union. Government take-overs often led to violence and displacement against the Estonian people and oppression of the Estonian language and cultural practices (which the Estonian people tried to keep alive as much as possible behind closed doors). *When trying to verify Laula’s lyrics that I learned at CCLT and are sung by Kongero, I realized the lyrics didn’t seem to translate well and I needed to reach out to someone who understood Estonian language and culture. I contacted San Francisco Eesti Selts, aka San Francisco Estonian Society to learn more. The lyrics that I had been taught and were found on Kongero’s recording were:
Laula, laula – Kellekenne
Laula, laula – Kellekenne
Ligu lindu – KelleKenne
Ligu lindu – KelleKenne
Translation (very loose translation)*
Sing, sing, softly with your little tongue,
Fly bird, sing softly with your little tongue.
Linnea, an awesome volunteer at the Estonian Society was very gracious in assisting and did some sleuth work around this song and reported the following: “
‘Kellekene’ and ‘lin(t/d)u’ are not modern standard Estonian, and without the original written lyrics from this version, I can’t say for sure whether it is due to a dialect or Swedish pronunciation of Estonian vowels. ‘Lin(t/d)u’ does mean bird, but the form doesn’t make sense here in Estonian – it makes more sense in Finnish (Finland lies directly across the water from Estonia). ‘Kellekene’ is not really a word – ‘kelle’ means ‘whose’ and -kene is the diminutive.”
“However, I (Linnea) did find a few pieces of Estonian folk poetry that show that your translation is likely very close to the intended meaning! Here is one version (excerpted from a longer poem)”:
Laula, laula, suukene,
liigu, linnukeelekene,
Sing, Sing little mouth,
Move, little bird’s tongue
Linnea also noted that Laula’s melody in this song has also been used in other traditional songs and that other traditional songs have used similar lyrics found in Laula combined with different melodies. I searched further and found mention of an ancient Estonian song form called Regi where some lyrics of the Laula song sung today may have originated: Excerpted from an article entitled Regi song by Harry Murk: “
Some observers might contend that the regi song is the only genuinely original aspect of Estonian culture.
Very simply: the regi song generally consists of four trochaic lines of verse exhibiting alliteration and parallelism. The following song, which my first true love sang to me years ago, is an excellent example of all the basic features of the regi song text”:
Laula, laula, suu-ukene, Sing now, sing now, li-ips, so dear,
liigu, linnukeelekene, Stir now, song bird’s sweet tongue, so dear,
mõlgu, marjameelekene, Mull now, berry-spirit, so dear,
ilutse, südamekene! Joyful be my heart now, so dear!
Küll sa siis saad vaita olla, Surely then a-silent you’ll fall,
kui saad alla musta mulla, When you’re ’neath the blackest good earth,
valge laudade vahele, In between those boards of whiteness,
kena kirstu keske’elle! In the inside of a sweet chest.
You can listen to Laula, Laula Suukene in Regi Song form here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SQjOpN8zk which does not correspond to our Laula lullaby.
*There are many parts of the story of the Laula lullaby lyric origin that remain unclear. I opted to use the text derived from the traditional Laula, Laula Suukene poem with our Laula lullaby because of the clear Estonian translation and the very close approximation to the more fragmented translation I had learned earlier.
We share this information in the hopes sharing and preserving parts of Estonian culture that survived through the centuries and acknowledge that this song comes with knowledge gaps. As is the case when sourcing traditional songs of long ago from the oral tradition, some parts of the sourcing story can be lost with time, especially if the story originates in countries where cultural oppression was a part of everyday life. If you know more about the story or lyric variations involving this Laula lullaby, please let us know. We’d love to keep learning and updating our information as we learn more.
Abundant thanks to Linea at The San Francisco Estonian Society for all of your help. You can learn more about the types of programs and activities The San Francisco Estonian Society is involved with here:
https://www.sfestonians.org/about-us
and support their work and programs here:
https://www.sfestonians.org/donate
You can learn more about the Swedish group Kongero and support their work here:
https://kongero.bandcamp.com/ You can hear Kongero singing their arrangement of Laula here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G_e-lvhD1U