Tabakne: The Child Who Went to Her Mother’s Grave to Nurse

Among old Korean folk songs, there is one called Tabakne.

Its name changed from region to region.
It was sung as Dabukne, Ttabukne, Tabokne, Ttabunsae, Ttabunja, Teobunja, Ttaongnyeo, and more.
In Gunsan it was Ttabunsae, in Suwon Ttabunja, in Gapyeong Ttabunda, in Daedeok Teobunja, in Samcheok Ttaongnyeo, and in Haman Dabakmeori.
All of these variants have been documented.

At first listen, the song is strange.

A child is crying.
Someone asks:

“Where are you going, crying like that?”

The child answers:

“I’m going to my mother’s grave to drink her milk.”

The path is not easy.
The child is told the water is too deep to cross.
The mountain is too high to climb.

But the child insists:

If the water is deep, I’ll swim.
If the mountain is high, I’ll crawl.

Others offer substitutes—fruit, branches, anything.
But the child refuses.
No persimmons, no wild pears.
The child wants only one thing:

A dead mother’s milk.

A version from Seongcheon, recorded in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, follows the same structure.
A dialogue unfolds, and in the end the child eats a melon growing near the mother’s grave, accepting its sweetness as the taste of her mother’s milk.

For a children’s song, the content is unbearably heavy.

The mother i