Mother, buy some milking-cans,
Milking-cans, milking-cans.
Where must our money come from?
Sell our father’s feather bed.
[This goes on for many more verses, articles of furniture being mentioned in each succeeding verse.]
—Earls Heaton (Herbert Hardy).
Buy me a milking-pail, my dear mother.
Where’s the money to come from, my dear daughter?
Sell father’s feather bed.
Where could your father sleep?
Sleep in the pig-sty.
What’s the pigs to sleep in?
Put them in the washing-tub.
What could I wash the clothes in?
Wash them in your thimble.
Thimble isn’t big enough for baby’s napkin.
Wash them in a saucer.
A saucer isn’t big enough for father’s shirt.
Wash by the river side, wash by the river side.
—Crockham Hill, Kent (Miss Chase).
Please, mother, buy me a milking-can,
Milking-can, milking-can,
Please, mother, buy me a milking-can,
My dear mother.