All the pretty horses

A longer than usual walk today (3½ hours), but the light was poor and the feature I wanted to blip didn't turn out well enough.

However, whenever we pass through this field on the slopes of the Gwaun valley there is usually a bunch of horses, mostly piebald or skewbald. They took an interest in me and my dog today and seemed to merit a picture.

All The Pretty Horses was the first novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, but the title comes from an old lullaby from the American South, supposedly sung by the African American slave nurse to her master's child, instead of to her own neglected babe. It thus includes the bitter verse:

Way down yonder, down in the meadow,
There's a poor wee little lamby.
The bees and the butterflies pickin' at its eyes,
The poor wee thing cried for her mammy.

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

Here's Nick Cave singing a sanitized version of the song.