The Little Horses

Hush you bye, don’t you cry
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you shall have
All the pretty little horses.

Blacks and bays, dapples and grays,
Coach and six-a little horses

Hush you bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you’ll have sweet cake
And all the pretty little horses.

Way down yonder, down in the meadow
There's a poor little lambie.
Bees and the butterflies pecking out his eyes
Poor lambie cried for his mammy.

Hush you bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you’ll have sweet cake
And all the pretty little horses.

A brown and a gray, and a black and a bay,
And a coach and six-a little horses.
A black and a bay, and a brown and a gray,
And a coach and six-a little horses.


Hush you bye, don’t you cry,
Oh you pretty little baby.
Go to sleepy little baby.
Oh you pretty little baby.

Songwriter and publishing date unknown.


Between 1950 and 1952 Aaron Copland assembled a collection of ten old American folk and popular tunes that he gave new settings with piano or small orchestra. He took these American tunes from various sources, many of them early publications in the collection of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Little Horses is a traditional American Southern lullaby of unknown date or author.It has been a family tradition for generations for my grandmother, aunts and myself to sing this lullaby to our children when they were babies. There are several versions of the same song with slight variations on the words presented here.

For example, most versions our family sings do not include the verse about "Bees and the butterflies pecking out his eyes."

Source:

Mobile Symphony - Program Notes
www.mobilesymphony.org/notes.php?notes=america

Public domain text taken from
www.enchbyench.com/angie/pretty_horses.htm


CST Approved

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