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Prince, My Favorite Horse © Music and Arrangement Jennie Avila

Words by Henry Kyd Douglas (Excerpts from his poem written November 25, 1863)

Guitar and Vocal - Jennie Avila, · Violins and Mandolin - Jay Ansill · Upright Bass - Ralph Gordon

I edited and composed music for these excerpts from a memorial poem written by Henry Kyd Douglas. He was freezing in sub zero weather in a Union prisoner of war camp, Johnson's Island, Ohio, when he received a letter from his sister, Nannie. She told him that his favorite childhood horse had gone blind from old age, fallen in the C & O Canal and died. Would he please write a memorial? Writing the memorial brought back loving memories that helped keep him warm during his incarceration. I chose to arrange 7 of the 10 stanzas that Kyd wrote for Prince. The Boonsborough Museum of History houses the original letter and poem. Kyd Douglas's memoirs were eventually published as I Rode With Stonewall.

A wail is heard in the homestead hall
Large tears of grief that rise as they fall
From hearts that are sad as a funeral pall
Tell me thou art dead my noble Prince

My hand first bridled thy tossing head
And guided the course as onward we sped
The turf flew in air from thy scornful tread
Then we thought not of death my merry Prince

CHORUS: On the blue Potomac's high raised banks
I dashed the spur in thy steaming flanks
And we galloped along enjoying thy pranks
With hearts light as air

Yet thee too wert gentle, my faithful Bay
And carried my mother full many a day
And Nannie too, when the sun's bright ray
Smiled on you both, my peerless Prince

Chorus...

For thou wert my joy in those peaceful days
When I dreamed not of war and its bloody bays
Of battle and hate, of glory and praise
But of ladies and thee, my gallant Prince

Thine eyes had been closed in an endless night
And darkness was thine in the midst of light
For thou went blind, oh pitiful sight
Yet murmured not my gentle Prince

And now thou art gone, my peerless steed!
No stone shall mark thy sleeping head
But oft we will visit thy watery bed
Oh my noble, gallant, faithful Prince