And at last answers very fast, and without pausing—
The miller! the miller! the miller!
"Round and Round, the Mill Goes Round," is mentioned as an English dance at the end of the seventeenth century. A song of "The Happy Miller" is printed in "Pills to Purge Melancholy" (1707), of which the first verse is—
How happy is the mortal that lives by his mill!
That depends on his own, not on Fortune's wheel;
By the sleight of his hand, and the strength of his back,
How merrily his mill goes, clack, clack, clack!
This song was doubtless founded on the popular game; but the modern children's sport has preserved the idea, if not the elegance, of the old dance better than the printed words of a hundred and seventy years since. A variation of the same game is still familiar in Canada and Sweden.[81]
No. 41.
The Miller of Gosport.
That the prejudice against the honesty of the miller was not confined to the Old World will appear from the following ballad:
There was an old miller in Gosport did dwell:
He had three sons whom he loved full well;
He called them to him, one—by—one,
Saying, "My—life—is—al—most—done!"[82]
He called to him his eldest son,
Saying, "My life is almost done,
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "my name is Dick,
And aout of each bushel I'll take one peck—
Of every bushel—that—I—grind,
I'll take one peck to ease my mind."