The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #30230   Message #1443710
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
25-Mar-05 - 02:56 PM
Thread Name: Origins: All the Pretty Little Horses
Subject: RE: Origins: All the Pretty Little Horses-2
As mentioned above, Scarborough has several versions of this lullaby.
One, with music, is simply titled "Lullaby." It is crossed often with "Baa-Baa, Black Sheep" (the gruesome version).

Lyr. Add: LULLABY (Pretty Little Ponies)

Hushaby,
Don't you cry,
Go to sleep, little baby.
And when you wake,
You shall have a cake,
And all the pretty little ponies.
Paint and bay,
Sorrel and gray,
All the pretty little ponies.
So hushaby,
Don't you cry,
Go to sleep, little baby.

"Learned from Negroes in Grimes Co., Texas

BAA-BAA, BLACK SHEEP

"Baa-baa, black sheep,
Where you lef' yo' mammy?"
"Way down yonder in de co'nfiel'.
Gnats and flies
A-pickin' out its eyes-
And de po' li'l sheep a-holler, Mammy!"

Collected in Virginia.

Lyr. Ad: LULLABY (Daddy Run Away)

Go to sleep, little baby.
Daddy run away,
An lef' nobody with the baby!

Daddy and Mammy went down town
To see their pretty little horses.
All the horses in that stable
Belong to this little baby!

"Mrs. Miller, of Louisiana, gave me a version which she had heard sung in her childhood by the Negroes on a Mississippi plantation.

A crossed version-

Lyr. Add: LULLABY (Black Sheep and Ponies)

Go to sleep, little baby,
When you wake
You shall have
All the mulies in the stable.
Buzzards and flies
Picking out its eyes,
Pore little baby crying,
Mamma, mamma!

Location unstated. "Mrs. Cammilla Breaseale sends a version given her by a Negro woman, who said it was a 'baby' song. This is an interesting combination of the lullaby given above and another more gruesome one, which is yet sung in various places."

A third song enters here:

Three old black crows sat on a tree,
And all were black as black can be,
Pappa's old horse took sick and died,
And the old black crows picked out its eyes.
(from plantation in north Louisiana.

Dorothy Scarborough, "On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs," 1925 (1963 reprint by Folklore Associates, pp. 144-149.