MILK-MAIDS

It is a sad subject for reflection that, among the extinct animals, we should have to reckon the milk-maids of Old England—the theme of so much poetry, the subject of such charming pictures.

The dodo exists now solely in a few specimens preserved in glass cases in two or at the outside three museums. The mammoth is discovered rarely embedded in blocks of ice under the Arctic Circle. The gigantic moa of New Zealand is recovered only from its scattered bones. The Great Auk was last seen off the coast of Waterford in 1834. Her egg sells for about a hundred pounds. A species of the English milk-maid is said to exist on the High Alps, and is called the Sennerin, but is so unlike the milk-maid of English picture and story, that naturalists are disposed to dispute it as a species, and regard it as belonging to a different genus.

Again, those temperate and frugal beings who frequent the A.B.C. establishments in London, and get a drink of milk for a penny and sandwiches for twopence, will see there very interesting and even charming specimens of the modern milk-maid, but in build, in plumage, and in habit, totally unlike the milk-maid we knew from nursery rhyme, and from illustrations. The old milk-maid—save the mark! the milk-maid was never old, her youth was perennial—I mean the milk-maid who lived and flourished in Britain till about 1834, when she disappeared along with the alca impennis—was fresh faced, rosy cheeked, strongly built, wore light cotton gowns and white aprons; carried her arms bare, sang cheerily as she went about her work, and had a tendency to become “bouncing.” Her habitat was a country farm, and she was to be found frequenting the fields, the cowshed, and the dairy.

The specimens exhibited by the Aerated Bread Company, on the other hand, are pale complexioned, somewhat lily faced, of a willowy build, always with plumage that is black, except for a white apron, the arms are clothed in black save for neat white cuffs about the wrists; they move silently, and are never seen in country pastures, only in A.B.C. refreshment places in London, and such large towns as can maintain these useful establishments.

But the difference extends further. The milk-maid of olden time was not exactly a wading, web-footed being, but she had large feet and shoes of the most solid, broad description, very necessary, as she was constrained to make her way through farm-yards over ankles in mud, or to go through the task of milking cows in byres or linneys that were—well, the reverse of clean. As to the modern milk-maid, it suffices to look at her feet—like those described by Sir John Suckling,

to be quite satisfied that she is not descended from, nor is a true variant of the milk-maid of olden time. The same Sir John Suckling admirably portrays the latter—

It is obvious this does not describe the A.B.C. milk-lass. The latter is a banana, the former an apple.

No maids now go a-milking, that is why there are no true milk-maids. The old order changeth. Nowadays in the country it is the men who milk. Women cannot be found to do it. They object to the trudge through the dirt, and the planting of the three-legged peggy-stool, and their feet in the oozy substance that forms the cushion enveloping the floor of the cow stall. I do not blame them. It is a dirty place.

But the milking of the cows in the byre was itself a novelty. Formerly the operation took place in the meadows, where it was clean enough, and the feet were in the sweet grass. The milk-girl filled her pails, adjusted a hoop that they might not swing against and spill over her cotton dress, and carried the pails to the dairy, singing as she went. But the weather is not always bright, and it was not only unpleasant, but unsafe, to milk out of doors in the rain; so the cattle were driven under cover, and there the dirt speedily grew to be deep, and presently the girls found it intolerable to have to wade in mire, so the final stage was that they abandoned the milking to the men.

Do the cows like it as well? I trow not. Surely the woman’s hand is best for the process. A woman instinctively knows how to milk. All men cannot acquire the art, and cows are well aware as to which are skilful milkers and which are not. A man may be a good milker, a woman always is one. That is the difference. What a charming sketch that is of Caldecott’s of the “maid who milked the cow with the crumpled horn,” in his illustrated story of the House that Jack Built! When our children nowadays recite that nursery doggerel, the words concerning that maid who milked the cow are not understood by them. They are an anachronism; for as soon as they know anything they know that no maiden all forlorn or all smiles, no maiden whatever, does now milk cows. And to conceive the idea of a “man all tattered and torn” approach and kiss such a milk-maid as occupies a position in an Aerated Bread Company’s establishment, is to demand of their young intelligences something too preposterous.

Do you remember old Izaak Walton’s account of the milk-maid with her merry songs? How he asked her to sing to him. “What song was it?” she inquired. “I pray—was it ‘Come, shepherds, deck your heads’; or ‘As at noon Dulcina rested’; or ‘Philida flouts me’; or ‘Chevy Chace’; or ‘Johnny Armstrong’; or ‘Troy Town’?” The memories of the ancient milk-maids were storehouses of delightful old English ballads; now the only persons who know any are ancient silver-headed topers in taverns.

It was formerly the custom for the bonny milk-maids to dance before the houses of their customers in the month of May, to obtain a small gratuity; and there is a dear old English tune, “The merry milk-maids in green,” that was probably the one to which they were wont to dance. To be a milk-maid and to be merry were synonymous terms in the olden time.

Pepys, in his diary, 13th October 1662, says, “With my father took a melancholy walk to Portholme, seeing the country-maids milking their cows there, they being there now at grass; and to see with what mirth they come all home together in pomp with their milk, and sometimes they have music go before them.”

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s play, “The Coxcomb,” printed in 1647, two milk-maids are introduced, Nan and Madge, and the scene in which they are on the stage is so charming, that I venture to quote a good deal of it—the authors have so happily caught the kindliness, the simplicity, the joyousness of the English milk-maid of yore.

But one word I must premise. Viola, the heroine of the play is astray and wandering over the country seeking to conceal whence she is and who she is.

Viola wearied and lost sighs—

Then enter Nan and Madge with milk pails.

Then Viola entreats the two girls to find her where she may not only lodge, but also find work.

We learn that Princess Elizabeth, in Queen Mary’s reign, was closely guarded and only suffered to walk in the gardens of the palace, and not abroad. “In this situation,” says Holingshed, “no marvell if she, hearing upon a time out of her garden at Woodstock, a certain milk-maid singing pleasantlie, wished herself to be a milk-maid as she was; saying that her case was better, and life merrier.”

Sir Thomas Overbury in his “Character of a milk-maid,” in the reign of James I., says, “She dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones.”

There is still a reminiscence of the milk-maid that comes to us every spring, in the fresh flickering cuckoo-flower of the delicate lilac, like the pale cotton, of which the dresses of the girls were made. It is the Cardamine pratensis that bears both the name of “Milk-maids” and “Cuckoo-flower.” The latter name it obtains, says old Gerarde, because it “doth flower in April and Maie, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering.” The same plant is also the “Lady’s Smock” of Shakespeare. I suppose it will retain the name of cuckoo-flower, for the cuckoo is still with us, but lose that of “milk-maids,” for, alas—milk-maids are no more.

The Alpine representative of the class is quite distinct. As soon as the high pastures are free from snow, the cattle are driven up the mountains and the women go with them. They remain at these high altitudes all the summer till the first frosts and snows come, when they, with the cattle, return. On the high Alps they have to milk the cows and make cheeses. They live in senn hÜte (wooden hovels), and sleep in the lofts among the hay. Here is a description by a native of the Alps.

“The Sennerin is engaged through the summer with tubs and churns; she attends to the milking and the fodder. An Almbub, a little boy, is with her, and he has to look after the herds, drive the cattle to pasture, and bring them back at even. Both live on the boiled milk and some lard out of a pot. Then when darkness comes on they light the kichspan, a bit of firwood dipped in pitch that serves as a candle, and by its flare she mends his torn garments which must be made to last till they return in October; and the boy in turn takes between his knees her shoes which have been torn in the rocks, and sews the rents with waxed thread, and tells tales or sings songs.

“For the most part the sennerin is not under twenty. She is generally over forty, one who has spent her life in making butter, and understands the cows. And every summer she is aloft since she became old enough to be trusted. Young women, the farmer knows well, do not answer on the Alpine pastures exposed to every sort of climate and weather. And yet—sometimes, a young one is there aloft, and then romance steps in.”

These sennerins, old, withered, for the most part, in rusty and dark dresses, with storm and sun-tanned faces, wrinkled, eminently unpoetical objects, how can we consider them as of the same race as our recently extinct dairy-maids?

I will end with a couple of verses of Martin Parker’s ballad on the Milk-maids, composed in the reign of James I. or Charles I.