It is a beautiful lullaby with some dark moments and whole-tone passages in the middle. This piece, in triple meter, is marked "Allegretto ma non troppo" (moderately fast, but not too fast). It is a description of a porcelain doll and features the Chinese pentatonic scale throughout. Debussy notes that the entire piece should be played with the soft pedal. Technically, this piece is quite difficult as it requires precise semi-detached playing in both hands with the melody between them. Again, there are darker moments in the bass near the middle. "The Little Shepherd" depicts a shepherd with his flute. There are three solos and three commentaries following them. The first solo has a breath mark at the end. This piece has different modes in it and uses dissonances which resolve into tonality. At the time of its composition, Golliwoggs were in fashion, due partly to the popularity at that time of the novels of Florence Kate Upton ("golliwog" is a later usage). They were stuffed black dolls with red pants, red bow ties and wild hair, somewhat reminiscent of the blackface minstrels of the time. The cakewalk was a dance or a strut, and the dancer with the most elaborate steps won a cake ("took the cake"). The piece is a ragtime with its syncopations and banjo-like effects. The dynamic range is quite large and very effective. During the piece, Debussy alludes satirically to Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde". The opening bars turn the famous half-diminished Tristan chord into a jaunty, syncopated arpeggio, while the middle 'B' section of this dance is interrupted on several occasions by the love-death leitmotif, marked "avec une grande émotion" (with great feeling). Each quotation is followed by banjo imitations. Debussy composed one more piece in the same style a year later, "The Little Nigar" as part of a piano method.