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.
“The bravest lasses gay
Live not so merry as they;