Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??

Subject: Trying to remember a song
From: GUEST,MtnSongbird
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 01:58 PM

Hello Mudcatters!
I know this is a long shot, but a couple of years ago, I heard a beautiful song-- It was a heartbreaking and lovely ballad about horses, from what I remember it was an ode to the days when horse and man were partners and friends and paid homage to the long history of their service to mankind, that is until the industrial revolution came along and took away our dependence on them

Any ideas what this song might be? Sorry I can't be more specific! I just remember that it was so beautiful and poignant, it made me cry.
Thanks for the help!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,#
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 02:02 PM

Last Trip Home ??

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,Helpful Advice
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 02:05 PM

Sounds like "Child Owlet" to me. A fine ballad about horses and their divers uses.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 02:07 PM

Yes! That's it!! Goodness I love this site. :D

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,#
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 02:10 PM

What's it? :-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 02:47 PM

What Childe Owlett ? a song about someone getting torn apart by 4 horses, I think not.

The Last Trip Home, a really great song, about horses is the one you want methinks.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,mike
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 03:21 PM

they shoot horses, dont they by Racing cars maybe
lovely song but not really a homage.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 05:59 PM

Nothing wrong with paying homage to long service but most folk songs tell of a different relationship between man and horse. Poor Old Horse, The Place where the old horse died, Creeping Jane give plenty of clues.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Tangledwood
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 06:04 PM

Horses of the World by John Warner is another lovely song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 07:36 PM

Think I've men this before in another thread ages ago, but there is a superb CD called "Gentle Giants" - ALL. Of the tracks are songs about horses. Well worth putting on the Christmas list. From Greentrax recordings.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,mrr
Date: 16 Dec 14 - 10:25 PM

heavy horses by jethro tull also...

And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry
and the nights are seen to draw colder
They'll beg for your strength, your gentle power
your noble grace and your bearing
And you'll strain once again to the sound of the gulls
in the wake of the deep plough, sharing...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Artful Codger
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 01:35 AM

There's Charlotte M. Hall's touching and true horse saga "Two Bits". Chokes me up most times I sing it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 02:51 AM

There is a thread about the traditional song The Carter here. It's about a very simple man's care for his working horses and is nothing like Jim The Carter Lad.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 04:09 PM

What about Harry Clifton's 'My Rattling old Black Mare' found in folksong collections but written c1866. There are threads on it here.

Subject: Lyr Add: HORSES OF THE WORLD (John Warner)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 06:50 PM

Tangledwood mentioned John Warner's Horses of the World so I got the words from his former singing partner Margaret Walters as they are not on his website

part of the trilogy - Horses of the World by John Warner - from his CD The Sea & The Soil. John's CDS are available from his website

HORSES OF THE WORLD
(John Warner © 1991)

And I want to say a word of thanks to the horses of the world
Whose solid backs and heaving lungs have placed us where we stand
Their eyes speak for their spirits that through the endless years
Have shaped us all, as we shaped the fruitful land
Such gentle souls that shaped the fruitful land

And I saw a fertile valley where a back and heavy soil
Promised golden grain and fruit upon the bough
And sweating giant Clydesdales thrust their shoulders at the toil
And loam rolled back, like the sea, behind the plough

And a thousand lowing cattle spread out on the western plain
And the thunder spoke from out the roaring cloud
But the stockmen rode to calm the herd through squalls of lashing hail
On their rough-haired walers, agile, strong and proud

So I'll keep an apple by me when I lean upon a fence
Where a palamino or some chestnut mare might graze
A present from a passer-by to one fine child of earth
Whose hoofprints pioneered our present ways

And I want to say a word of thanks to the horses of the world
Whose solid backs and heaving lungs have placed us where we stand
Their eyes speak for their spirits that through the endless years
Have shaped us all, as we shaped the fruitful land
Such gentle souls that shaped the fruitful land

Subject: Lyr Add: THE HORSE RACE (John Warner)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 06:52 PM

part of the trilogy - Horses of the World by John Warner - from his CD The Sea & The Soil. John's CDS are available from his website

THE HORSE RACE – GOLDEN SLIPPER TWO-YEAR OLD STAKES
(John Warner © 1991)

In behind the gate she stood and held her concentration tight
A boxer gloved and ready for the fight behind the iron gate
Grass beneath her feet, waiting for the blood to turn to fire
Her jockey's concentration tight as wire within his leather seat

The gate is down and sixteen horses thrust into the light
The colours of the jockeys glow like suns
A thousand beats a minute from a cloud of whirling legs
Each one a hammer driving down five tons, driving down five tons

See the lady dance, slow motion shows her agile gliding grace
The leaping, stretching splendour of their race, see the lady dance
Fragile yet so strong, balance and precision, these are all
The timing of the hoofbeats, where they fall, you dare not get them wrong

Like a rifle firing there comes a vicious crack
The lady screams and stumbles to the earth
The riders thunder past her as he shrieks her dire distress
Entangled in her saddle, bit and girth, saddle bit and girth.

Judgement has been read, cannon bone and sesamoids are broke
A verdict that o mortal can revoke, the needle and she's dead
The ambulance has gone, they'll set the jockey's fracture, ease his pain
Someday he might be fit to ride again, still the race goes on.

Out there in the paddock they're pouring the champagne
For the ladies in their sunhats and their pride
For the favourite came in winner at odds of five to one
But who will mourn the lady that just died, the lady that just died

In the members bar the syndicate is drinking what it lost
Discussing what a two-year-old might cost, curse the members bar
Curse the punters all, for two-year-olds have vigour, heart and grace
But growing bones too fragile yet to race.
Who mourns them when they fall?

Subject: Lyr Add: THE FARRIER'S TRADE (John Warner)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 06:56 PM

part of the trilogy - Horses of the World by John Warner - from his CD The Sea & The Soil. John's CDS are available from his website

THE FARRIER'S TRADE
(John Warner © 1991)

Here's to the farrier's trade - may their anvils ever ring true
May the Pritchel and Buffer still find employ
And proud strong horses to shoe, brave boys
Proud strong horses to shoe

The anvil rang like an old church bell, the forge it roared like a gale
And down the wind came a pungent smell that told an immortal tale
A tale well known to the black and the bay, to coachmen, carter, and carrier
For the smell was the hoof and the burning shoe and the trade was the craft of the farrier

A blue flame leapt from the crackling coals, at its heart was a flame of gold
And out of that heart came a red-hot steel in the farrier's tong's firm hold
Onto the anvil's face it swept, and a hammer bit into its edge
It curved to the farrier's swift hard blows, and it squared to the striker's sledge

And many a draught horse, hack or cob stood fast at the hitching rails
While the farrier bent to the fetlock's hair with a mouthful of squarehead nails
And offered up the shoe to the waiting foot with a sizzle, a smoke and a smell
Pritchel and clench, hammer, clip and quench and file down the clenches well

Though the motor roars out across the world its message of haste or greed
Though the horse has gone from the highway side with its danger and noise and speed
Yet down at the fence waits an ancient friend that progress will never unseat
And while there's a horse, there's a need for shoes, and farriers to tend its feet

Subject: Lyr Add: HORSES OF THE WORLD (John Warner)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Dec 14 - 07:02 PM

4th part of the trilogy - Horses of the World by John Warner - from his CD The Sea & The Soil. John's CDS are available from his website


HORSES OF THE WORLD reprise
(John Warner © 1991)

So if you should see me learning on a nameless paddock fence
And I'm scratching some old stock horse at the ears
You might come and share the moment and the apples that I bring
For humankind's companion down the years

And I dreamed I stood upon a hill above a grassy plain
Where the windswept sedges heaved like the restless sea
And I saw horses flash like jewels before the setting sun
Wild eyes and flowing manes in ancient glory

So I want to say a word of thanks to the horses of the world
Whose solid backs and heaving lungs have placed us where we stand
Their eyes speak for their spirits that through the endless years
Have shaped us all as we shaped the fruitful land
Such gentle souls who shaped the fruitful land
All the horses that shaped the fruitful land

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Stewie
Date: 18 Dec 14 - 07:15 PM

Another fine song that pays homage to the horse is Fred Small's The Heart of the Apalloosa.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: RiGGy
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 04:27 PM

No one mentioned Sarah Morgan's setting of the C.FoxSmith poem HOME LADS HOME http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=10099

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Tangledwood
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 04:45 PM

Well done Sandra!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: breezy
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 03:49 AM

As If He Knew , by Eric Bogle ?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 04:17 AM

There's also Alan Burbidge's "Empty Echoes", which was the subject of a separate Mudcat thread!

Kitty

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,open mike
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 04:30 AM

Here is the play list from my radio show from 6-2-13
which was basically 2 hours of music all about horses
(I have made a recording from this collection to donate
as a benefit for our local horse rescue sanctuary)

1:03pm         Juni Fisher Let 'er go, let 'er buck,                            A Horse   Like You
1:08pm         Juni Fisher         Listen To The Horse         Listen to the Horse
1:12pm         Andria Kidd         Sespe Sky         Bucky
12:52pm         Leelee and Friends         Western Stars         Full Moon Full of Love
1:17pm         Katie Lee         10,000 Cattle         10,000 Cattle
1:22pm         Claudia Nygaard         Let the Storm Roll In         His Left Side
1:24pm         Marie-Lynn Hammond         HoofBeats         Heavy Horse Song
1:33pm         Mountain Saddle Band         The Heart of a Cowboy         I Dream of Riding Fast Horses
1:36pm         Curly Musgrave         Range and Romance         Same Kind of Horses
1:40pm         Kristyn Harris         Let Me Ride         What a Horse Has Gotta Do
1:48pm         The Coyotes and Friends Home Style Cowboy Music Dark Horse
1:52pm         The Coyotes and Friends Home Style Cowboy Music My Pinto Pal
1:53pm         Rosalie Sorrels Strangers in Another Country         I Had a Mule
2:05pm         Thomas Snow         Friends         Stewball
2:09pm         Stephanie Davis Crocus in the Snow         The Spotted Ass
2:22pm         Almeda Terry         Voices from the Range         Our Last Ride
2:22pm         Willie Nelson         Heroes         A Horse Called Music
2:24pm         Christopher Smith Sweet River Grace         Dead Horse Trampoline
2:31pm         unknown         old 78 rpm recording         Cowboy's Lament (Streets of Laredo)
2:36pm         Joyce Woodson         She's in Love with her Horse         She's in Love with her Horse
2:38pm         Juni Fisher         Let 'er Go, Let 'er Bcuk, Let 'er Fly         Pony Called Love
2:49pm         FIDDLE WHAM DIDDLE         Old School Old Time         Spotted Pony
2:54pm         Bruce Sagan and Andrea Hoag         Spelstundarna         Trollrikepolskan

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 06:49 PM

Also Jon Harvison's "Heavy Horses" on his "High Diving" CD - Kitty

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: ballad paying homage to horses??
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 21 Dec 14 - 07:00 PM

Have appreciated the songs mentioned in this thread. Found several recordings of Last Trip Home on emusic and downloaded the Prickly Pear version. There were also other good versions.