Who does not remember old Isaac Walton and his merry ballad-singing dairymaid?
Pepys, in his Diary, 13th October, 1662, writes: "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."
"When cold bleak winds do roar,
And flowers can spring no more,
The fields that were seen
So pleasant and green
By winter all candied o'er:
Oh! how the town lass
Looks, with her white face
And lips so deadly pale.
But it is not so
With those that go
Through frost and snow,
With cheeks that glow,
To carry the milking pail."
On May-day was the festival of the milkmaids. I can remember, in 1845, seeing Jack in the Green and Maid Marian parading in the Strand.
Pepys, in his Diary, on the 1st May, 1667, enters—"To Westminster; on the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them."
In a set of prints called "Tempest's Cryes of Lon'on," one is called "The Merry Milkmaid," whose proper name was Kate Smith. She is dancing with her milk-pail on her head, decorated with silver cups, tankards, and salvers, borrowed for the purpose, and tied together with ribbands, and ornamented with flowers. "Of later years, the plate, with other decorations, were placed in a pyramidical form, and carried by two chairmen upon a wooden horse. The milkmaids walked before it, and performed the dance without any encumbrance."