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D&D style dragons come out of the egg knowing languages meaning that they had to learn it somewhere. I'm not interested in that. What I want to know is, that assuming Dragon lullabies are like human lullabies, what would they sing about?

To clarify most human lullabies are about getting the baby to quiet down and also the scary parts of the world. There's more articles about it but here's a good example: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21035103

There's also a National Geographic article that was good: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/what-the-lullabies-we-sing-to-our-children-reveal-about-us-feature

What would a dragon be scared of, for the babies or the dragons, enough to sing to their eggs while brooding over them? I'm mostly interested in Ice Dragons if you want a specific type of dragon but any dragon in general will do.

In my world, sixty or so years ago the air became poisonous, the poison part is just hand waving because nobody knows why other then it is in the story, to sapient creatures, dragons included, other then that it's a vaguely earth centric world up to the 1970s. After that it diverged into most people dying and people, including dragons in disguise, making out living in various manners. The three largest ones are giant walls of stone that happen to block the poison in the air, the mining quarry that mines said stone, and one place that manages to pull the poison out of the air.

To clarify, the dragons are D&D style in an earth-like world up until the 1970s after which the timeline changes.

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    $\begingroup$ We can’t really answer without knowing more about A: your world and B: Your dragons. The answer for D&D style dragons on the Sword Coast is adventurers and Bahamut, while Mcaffrey style dragons on Pern are terrified of Threads and abandonment... $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    May 9, 2021 at 14:03
  • $\begingroup$ @JoeBloggs They're dnd style dragons. I'll add some stuff about the world. $\endgroup$
    – Idan
    May 9, 2021 at 14:46
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    $\begingroup$ Subsonic rumbles, of course. Speech frequencies do not travel at all well over the shell boundary of an egg. $\endgroup$
    – PcMan
    May 9, 2021 at 15:43
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    $\begingroup$ @PcMan That actually sounds really fascinating. I would love if you would up an answer over it. Would it be in some type of morse code? A specific type of language that dragons only use for communicating with eggs that they learned while eggs? I've heard of kids who had to relearn what english sounded like after getting ear surgery and would want to know if you think the dragons would have two separate languages for songs? What would the rumbles be like topic wise or would the presence of it be enough for comfort? I don't know if I'm allowed to ask this stuff like this but I would love to know $\endgroup$
    – Idan
    May 9, 2021 at 16:40
  • $\begingroup$ They might consider straight translations, like: lingojam.com/Thuum Rock a-bye pahdul Nau fin tree top. rul fin ven blows, fin cradle fen rock. rul fin baugh breaks, fin cradle fen Mah. down fen come pahdul, cradle ahrk pah $\endgroup$ Sep 30, 2021 at 16:43

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Dragons vary a lot from media-to-media, but they are always the most prideful beings in the world. How could that be different, when they are the apex predator? So, naturally, their songs would be most likely about pride:

My Little Dragonkin
     (sing to the tune of bayu bayushki bayu) 

There are those with little mouths,
that can't scare bear or boar.
But rejoice, we're dragonkin,
and everyone will fear your roar.

There are those with no claws,
that can't hunt the little sheep.
But rejoice, we're dragonkin,
and even giants we make bleed.

There are those that have no wings,
that can only dream to fly.
But rejoice, we're dragonkin,
and you too will rule the sky.

There are those that shed some tears,
'cause they know no gold nor gem.
But rejoice, we're dragonkin,
and you will be richer than any men.

With your hoard, in your den,
Greater than any elven-king.
Stand with pride, show your might,
'cause you're my little dragonkin.

Additional themes for dragon lullabies will include things that are unique to dragons, and put them apart from the other sentient races - their claws, their ability to fly, their magic, and their overall behavior. To give some examples:

  • Dragon-magic is on a league of its own. Magic that is specific to dragons and can't be emulated by beings not-related to dragons is specially rare in fiction, and when it appears it is usually for something big, almost miracle-like. Obviously, not all dragons are such exceptional magicians, but the puny humans don't need to know that. So, songs that talk about magic will definitely be a thing.
  • Pilling up treasure is up there in the Top 3 Hobbies for the Modern Dragon. What exactly that treasure is might change from time to time, but the bottom line is that dragons are collectors of things. Some like shiny things (gold, gems), others like darky things (skulls, bones), others like to collect maids and kids, and so on. With that in mind, it is natural to imagine that dragons will also make songs about collecting all sorts of things and making their hoards big.
  • Eating. Dragons can eat almost anything, including a lot of things that shouldn't be edible. Dragons don't remove the stupid metal peel of a knight before gulping them up - the poor sod just goes in whole, and the magically-enhanced stomach acid does the rest. So, songs about eating things - be it plants, animals, or other sentient beings will certainly be a thing. I can easily picture songs with themes like a dragon trying to grow big enough to eat very big things - like a tower, a castle, or the moon.
  • Dragon Anatomy. Dragons are very different from the usual creature - they have six limbs instead of four, they look like reptiles but are built like cats, they have long tails and powerful claws, mighty teeth and a powerful breath weapon. Songs that name those things, sang by the dragon-mom while she boops the respective wyrmling's body parts can easily be part of the repertoire.
  • Dragon smells. Apparently a lot of time was wasted by several authors to write about how dragons smell like.. If you subscribe to the idea that each type of dragon has a specific smell, then memorizing what type of dragon smells like what can help dragons identify each other on the field, specially if they do disguise themselves like humans to keep a low profile.
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  • $\begingroup$ That's really sweet for a dragon! I really like the song. At the end is it supposed to be your or you? Men or man? We make even giants bleed or even giants we make bleed? These change the meaning of parts of the song and I want to make certain that's what you were intending as opposed to just grammer errors. $\endgroup$
    – Idan
    May 10, 2021 at 12:19
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    $\begingroup$ @Idan "any men" is intentional. There I butchered the grammar for a better rhyme. For the rest, it might be a language barrier but for me "even giants we make bleed" and "we make even giants bleed" are the same in meaning, just constructed differently. I choose that specific form because I feel it fits the tune of Bayu Bayushky Bayu a little better. On the last part, it is "your" on the might part. That was a typo, my bad! $\endgroup$
    – Mermaker
    May 10, 2021 at 12:30
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Mathematical progressions.

Ice dragons are asocial. They do not care about other creatures, or other dragons. They do not have familial or filial attachments. When the young dragons fledge, they will not look back. Ice dragons have none of the sociocultural baggage humans have. They have no need for education that is friendly, or funny, or serves to reinforce their cultural identities.

Ice dragons are rational. They understand physics and that the world moves in ways that can be understood.

Ice dragons do sing. Their songs have no words.

The ice dragon mother sings pure tones. Then she changes the pitch by multiples of the frequency up and down. The ice dragon mother sings pure tones. She changes the rhythm by multiples up and down. The ice dragon mother sings chords. Then she changes the chord to those chords which are relative to it. Through her songs, she teaches the new dragons math, and rhythm, and the immutable relationships of things that can be precisely known.

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  • $\begingroup$ That is the coolest one I've heard so far. $\endgroup$
    – Idan
    May 10, 2021 at 12:15
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    $\begingroup$ Upvoted. They whistle. And of course dragons prefer the Phrygian Dominant scale. That's how they always sing, with an air of mysterious wisdom and a touch of evil google.com/search?q=phrygian+dominant+scale $\endgroup$
    – Goodies
    Sep 30, 2021 at 20:59
  • $\begingroup$ @Goodies I am fairly sure they use a pentatonic 12 Lyu tuning instead. $\endgroup$
    – Trish
    Apr 13, 2022 at 21:52
  • $\begingroup$ @Trish only Chinese dragons do. $\endgroup$
    – Goodies
    Apr 14, 2022 at 18:17
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Ice Dragon Lullabies Sing to a Harsh Existence

Ice Dragons by nature of their extreme and inhospitable environment may have a culture focused on survival, efficiency of energy, and sensing.

Because they are adapted to the frigid environment, their prey are generally less plentiful, and so food, and death by starvation (as opposed to other life forms’ focus on falling from trees, or death by pandemic and burning) may be their drive and fear, respectively.

Ice Dragons, to assist in catching the rare prey in their harsh environment, will have some specially adapted sensing which might be the source of lyrics.

They are of course, well adapted to harsh winters and will have natural affinity to sensing their surroundings. Even during the harshest ice storms, they will be adapted to survival. They may be attuned to sensing heat signatures, or have mastered hearing sufficient to filter out noises by the wind to better pinpoint needed food. These traits will be valued for continuation of the species.

I would imagine Ice Dragon lullabies and nursery rhymes to perhaps:

  1. warn of starvation, or mock death by starvation;
  2. praise strong senses;
  3. edify survival;
  4. value efficiency;
  5. mock as weakness temperate climates or those who live there.

Their surroundings are brutal, and so will be their songs.

Some examples:

Scottish lullaby about loss:

Hovan, Hovan Gorry og O I’ve lost my darling baby, O!

Italian lullaby about giving baby up (for example if not enough food can be provided for it), which has ice-centric theme also as its final hook:

Ninna nanna, ninna oh. To whom shall I give this baby? If I give him to the old hag, she’ll keep it for a week.

If I give him to the black ox, he’ll keep it for an entire year.

If I give it to the white wolf, he’ll keep it for a long time.

A brutal Malaysian lullaby, Lima Anak Ayam, could be retooled to Ice Dragon eggs:

Five chicks One chick dies

One chick dying leaves four

A Danish lullaby captures a similar hard-scrabble existence:

Dad is working very hard, Mum has to help. Hans cries again and again when she has to leave.

We have to work to earn a living. The children will suffer.

We cannot give them any better even though we want to.

The Turkish lullaby, Incili Bebek Ninnisi, is a great example, telling the story of a man who promised to sacrifice three camels if his wife could have a child, but then decided to renege and keep the three camels after she gave birth. An eagle then carried the baby off and tore it to pieces. The song is from the perspective of the grief-stricken mother:

Above black eagles wheeling, All of a sudden swooping,

My little baby stealing,

Sleep, little baby, sleep.

Above black eagles soaring,

A crown of pearls left lying,

Your stupid father snoring.

Dragon Lullabies Generally Human lullabies, by contrast, focus on boogeymen or animals stealing a baby, or a cradle falling from tree, or just the stars above. Dragons aren’t generally going to embrace the boogeyman genre of lullabies — dragons are generally at the top of the food chain, unless their boogeyman is an abysmal fiend, Demi-god, or god. Physical suffering, like falling from tree isn’t a worry, especially when you have wings. And they can fly to the air, although twinkling stars — unreachable to even earthly-bound dragons — still might hold some wonder.

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Statistically speaking, killing invading humans.

Sing a happy elf song human:all happy elf and dwarf songs are about killing invading humans.

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    $\begingroup$ I like it... but I believe picture only answers kind of falls under the same category as link only answers. $\endgroup$
    – Nosajimiki
    Sep 28, 2021 at 13:48
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The mother would not sing to the eggs

In the womb, a human fetus is exposed to the constant rhythm of the mother's heartbeat, the squeeze of the uterus, the bob of the mother walking, and vibrations caused by the mother's muffled voice. The absence of the familiar sounds and feels of the womb are disturbing to a human infant, and things that recreate this environment are comforting. So, when a newborn is crying, we instinctively do things to recreate these feelings like swaddling, rocking, shushing, and singing.

Focusing on the singing part: When the fetus is in the belly, the mother's voice creates vibrations that don't happen outside of the amniotic fluid; so, we have to try extra hard to create vibrations to soothe the baby. What a newborn baby actually finds soothing about singing is the vibrato; so, if you hold an infant to your chest and do a deep throat song, it is actually WAY more effective than singing a higher pitched song with words. However, it only takes a few weeks for the baby's comfort cues to transition from just vibrations to be the actually singing at which point it becomes the singing itself that is comforting.

The thing about eggs is that the babies are still in a liquid at this point in their development meaning they will still get the same vibrations through normal speech as they did inside of their mother; so, if we assume that mother dragons care about comforting the babies developing in the eggs, then as the mother dragon sits on her eggs to keep them warm, she would probably resort to telling them stories rather than singing them songs.

It would only be after the eggs hatch that a mother dragon's parenting style might transition to using song as a source of comfort.

So what stories would they tell their eggs?

When we look at human lullabies we sing about everything from far away times and places, to mundane actives, to total non-sense, to babies falling to their deaths... the same is true of bedtime stories. Since bedtime stories and lullaby's are more or less the same thing in different media, we can use their structures interchangeably.

While the OP is right to identify that these stories (and lullaby's) focus on scary things, it is not to scare the child, but to establish a since of consequences for unacceptable behaviors. Goldilocks is eaten because she vandalized someone's home. Little Red Ridding Hood is eaten because she talks to strangers. The 2 of the 3 little pigs are almost eaten because they were too lazy to prepare properly. Icarus falls to his death because he does not listen to his father's advice.

In some cases, the natural consequence to an unacceptable behavior is exactly what makes the behavior unacceptable. And in others, a "Big Bad Wolf" archetype is inserted to create a consequence for socially unacceptable behaviors that in reality rarely have actual consequences other than pissing someone else off. The most obvious thing of natural consequence in your world is the poison gas. There will be a lot of stories about baby dragons wondering into the gas and dyeing... but there will also be taboos. Maybe baby dragons are not supposed to go out while the mother is asleep, or maybe they should not pick their teeth with their tails, or maybe they are only supposed to eat sheep head-first. So, what happens to these naughty little dragons? Well the "Big Bad Wolf" archetype represents the single greatest threat we USED to have but still persists in our social consciousness; so, your dragons may remember the time that humans were numerous and had guns, and missiles, and fighter jets, etc. So, even with the threat of man being gone, the stories of "men with guns" will persist, and even become embellished for thousands of years.

"So remember baby dragon, if you don't eat your vegetables, the men with guns will come and shoot you out of the sky."

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They would sing about the many dangers of the world, and the satisfaction of growing too large for those dangers to harm you.

DND dragons seem to be very much an R-type species. They have very little to fear as adults, but as a hatchling or young dragon, the forgotten realms are a very dangerous place. There are numerous monsters able to overpower a young dragon, especially in great numbers. In addition, there are murderous adventurers and larger dragons to fear.

However, if a dragon survives long enough to reach adulthood, most of those dangers become nothing more than food and playthings. Even a coordinated army of human, elf, and dwarf soldiers would struggle to bring down the largest dragons, especially if the dragon mostly stays in the air.

As such, a fitting lullaby for dragons, especially antisocial white dragons would be about all the perils of the world, and about the glory that waits for those who survive.

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Other chromatic dragons would maybe sing, but probably not ice dragons. Silver dragons would definitely sing about humanoids and their cultures.

Copper dragons would probably just tell its eggs jokes or sing to them about the importance of a high-spirited happy life, since they're fans of puns and pranks.

Brass dragons would probably talk to their eggs. Very, very regularly. They crave conversations to an almost unhealthy extent (yet they seek desolate places, they're a bit paradoxal).

Going more strictly according to dnd descriptions of the dragons, you'd probably have a scenario where no dragon type is the same. Chromatic dragons are usually more "evil", that is, they're more self centered and prideful in a way that's diminishing to everything else. Metallic dragons on the other hand are much more good aligned and less centered on themselves. This means that, by dnd standards, each dragon would probably behave towards their eggs in a way that reflects the ideals and morals of its kind. Going by that, we could approximate more or less what the songs would mostly be about:

Golden dragons would sing about growing wise, but humble, helping others and similar virtues.

Silver dragons (the good ice dragons) would sing about distant lands and cultures and all the beauty the little one can find in them once they're ready, as well as how much more than mere gold creatures seemingly so frail can offer (because silver dragons basically love seeing and experiencing the culture of the many humanoid races, to the point their hordes are usually composed in good amount of things like human artifacts and items with strong cultural value).

Bronze dragons would sing about the oceans, sea shanties and events that took place among the waves.

Chromatic dragons on the other hand would probably have songs less about others and more about themselves.

The prideful red dragons would sing of their feats, about the need to grow strong and defending their pride as members of a species second only to the gods themselves.

Green dragons would sing praises of one's knowledge and cunning, the power of speech and how the strongest barbarian can dance like puppets In the palms of those who know what to say and when.

The greedy Blue dragons would sing of glorious hordes, the importance of gold and all that's precious over the lives of others and treasures they expertly hid under the sand (treating its children like a kind of treasure might not be totally out of bounds for them either).

Black dragons could sing of their children growing powerful and showing their might to the world, of the seed of destruction they carry within, as well as tales of foolish adventurers who overestimated themselves over the might of a black dragon.

The bestial white dragons (the more classic "ice" dragons) are the exception. They're naturally more animalistic than the others, prefer to be solitary and rarely speak, but take the most pride in their achievements through sheer might (to the point trying to bribe one by offering something feels like an insult to their ability to simply take it). Due to this, I believe they'd be much more like an alligator and a bear in behavior. It wouldn't sing, it'd simply hum constantly to let their babies know that it's close and there to help them. White dragons have pristine memory and can recall things almost perfectly, so to such a creature that values strength over all, I'd say the biggest quality a mother could have would probably be to be strong enough to be capable of always being there for its offspring, because it's babies would probably be able to remember even at its death bed.

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    $\begingroup$ Ice Dragons aren't necessarily white dragons. Silver dragons are also Ice Dragons, and they fit better with the description that the OP provided (with the shapeshifting and all.) $\endgroup$
    – Mermaker
    Sep 28, 2021 at 15:08
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    $\begingroup$ @T.Sar thanks for the heads up. I've edited to add in a bit more about them (also I'd forgotten brass and copper dragons so). $\endgroup$ Sep 28, 2021 at 15:15

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