All the Pretty Little Horses

Perhaps the most famous and most moving of all traditional American lullabies. It was born in the American South in the time of slavery, sung by enslaved African-American mothers who were made to care for their masters’ children while their own babies slept alone. It is a song that rose out of deep sorrow — and was transfigured, verse by verse, into a melody of almost unmatched tenderness. The promise of “all the pretty little horses” is a dream of comfort offered to a child, from a mother who had so little to give but her voice.