“Six White Horses” is a bluegrass song written by Clyde Moody, who at the time was a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. Monroe and the band recorded it in 1940, among the earliest sides of his long career.
The lyric is a song of grief built on a funeral image: the singer stands and watches a funeral procession pass — six white horses drawing a black hearse — carrying the body of the woman he loved. That stark, processional picture of loss gave the song its mournful weight.
The song stayed in the bluegrass repertoire as a sorrowful traditional-style number.
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