ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES

Hushaby, 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.
Hushaby,
Don't you cry,
Go to sleepy, little baby.

Hushaby,
Don't you cry,
Go to sleepy, little baby.
Way down yonder
In de medder
There's a po' lil lambie,
De bees an' de butterflies
Peckin' out its eyes,
De po' lil thing cried, "Mammy!"
Hushaby,
Don't you cry,
Go to sleepy, little baby.

Notes: Dorothy Scarborough in her book, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, says this is one of the lullabies that the Negro mammies sang to their little white charges.


John & Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934), pp. 304-305

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Fred & Irwin Silber's 1973 Folksinger's Wordbook (p. 407) has this version from Lomax, with the annoying "Negro dialect" removed:

ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES

Hushabye, 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.

Way down yonder
In the meadow
There's a poor little lambie;
The bees and the butterflies
Pickin' out his eyes,
The poor little thing thing cried, "Mammy!"
Hushaby,
Don't you cry,
Go to sleepy, little baby.