From the recording Sable Island Horses
Sable Island Horses is Lennie's latest release from his most recent album, Shelter from the Storms .
He has long been fascinated by Sable Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, where generations of approximately 500 wild horses have lived and survived without any human interaction for hundreds of years. These amazing wild horses are believed to be descended from Acadian horses taken during the expulsion of 1755. They were transported to the island by Thomas Hancock with the plan to harvest them later and put them up for sale, but were instead eventually abandoned to survive on their own on this wind-swept isolated island.
Lennie and his partner Patricia Richard went to the island twice to spend time among the horses, and this song and video were the result of those trips.
Lyrics
Sable Island Horses
Ah the Sable Island Horses
They wander o’er the sands
Like spirits from another time
Banished from their lands
Hear the echo of their lives
In ancient melody
Ah the Sable Island horses
Are the song of Acadie
In the years of so much sorrow
When the soldiers came with guns
When the fields were set on fire
Nowhere to hide or run
All the smoke and children crying
All the farms that were destroyed
All the families deported
And the horses were the spoils
Chorus
To an isolated island
On an unforgiving sea
The horses there were taken
To be sold eventually
No protection from the north winds
Or the cruel and wicked storms
No comfort from their master’s voice
Abandoned there alone
Chorus
At a gallop on the shore
To the rhythm of the tides
The Sable Island horses
In the struggle to survive
Like songs their ancestors
Heard at work while in the fields
The Sable Island horses
Will forever be free
Hear the echo of their lives
Ah the Sable Island horses
Chorus
They’re the song of Acadie