SHANGHAI, May 30 -- A COLLECTION of folk songs improvised by an elderly woman unable to read or write has just been released by a city publisher.

Zhang Wenxian, 70, has lived her whole life in the rural Nanhui District. She has created a range of songs about a mother crying for her daughter just before the daughter gets married.

The Chinese songs are littered with scenes in which a mother says a tearful farewell to a daughter on the eve of the daughter's wedding day.

In Chinese tradition, married daughters go to live with their in-laws and are effectively separated from their parents forever.

In the laments, which are known as "kujiage," the mother will exhort her daughter to work hard, be considerate and embody other traditional virtues of a wife.

Zhang says she has experienced many evenings when mothers have cried for their daughters. Since the age of 15 she has used these experiences to compose her own lyrics and put them to music.

Zhang, who herself is a mother of five daughters, improvised a different lament for each of her daughters. On the day before their weddings, Zhang sat down on their beds and sang their songs all night.

Zhang said it was her turn to cry songs for her own daughters.

Now local culture officials have written down hundreds of Zhang's songs and put them into a collection published by the Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House.

"Kujiage" has nearly disappeared from the city.