Milkmaid

“ Miss Featheredge.—And here comes the milkmaid. Oh, I am so glad she is a milkmaid and not a milkman!
Farmer Curtis.—She couldn't very well be that.
Miss Featheredge.—I feel positively grateful to you, Mr. Curtis. It is all so delightfully rural and effective—the gentle cows, the fresh, young milkmaid—oh, if she will only carry the milk-pails on her head, it will simply be a picture!
Farmer Curtis.—H'm, Elmiry'll hardly do that.
Miss Featheredge.—I am so sorry. There is something very calm and soothing about a cow, I think; don't you, Mr. Curtis? ”

“ The milkmaids’ chief haunt was Islington, whence hundreds of them carried the milk into London every morning. In his print “Evening,” the scene of which is laid outside the “Middleton Head,” Hogarth has an Islington milkmaid milking a cow, and in his “Enraged Musicians,” a milkmaid with her cry of Milk Belouw contributes to the town noises. The “garlands of massive plate” which the milkmaids carried round on May Day were borrowed of pawnbrokers on security. ”

“ And the maid goes to milk you there, every day;
She speaks to you kindly and sits by your side,
She pats you, she loves you, she strokes your sleek hide:
Then come along home, pretty mooly cow, do."
But the mooly cow only said, "Moo-o-o!"
"Mooly cow, mooly cow, whisking your tail,
The milkmaid is waiting, I say, with her pail;
She tucks up her petticoats, tidy and neat,
And places the three-leggéd stool for her seat:—
What can you be staring at, mooly? You know
That we ought to have gone home an hour ago.
How dark it is growing! O, what shall I do?" ”

“ I have frequently visited my aunt’s dairy; and the operations there are so new to one just fresh from a country where cows and dairy are but little attended to, that I take constant interest in them. “And the milkmaid singeth blithe” is now a familiar image to me; formerly it was only from your description I understood it. How is it that such a precious gift as milk can be overlooked in any part of the world, particularly in one that abounds with cattle as Brazil does ”

“ Before supper we all went down to the barn to see the milking. Pomona, who knew all about such things, having been on a farm in her first youth, was to be the milkmaid. But when she began operations, she did no more than begin. Milk as industriously as she might, she got no milk.
“This is a queer cow,” said Pomona.
“Are you sure that you know how to milk?” asked Euphemia anxiously.
“Can I milk?” said Pomona. “Why, of course, ma'am. I've seen 'em milk hundreds of times.” ”

“ Sometimes a horn is knocked off or a leg broken before the struggling reindeer understands that she is to be milked and not branded or butchered. Under the circumstances the dairying feature of Arctic life is not very prominent, and the milkmaid’s song is not welcomed by the wise little animals that have undergone the torture of one milking. ”

“ But when I found that Biddy could never succeed in getting near her in the pasture, and that any kind of success in the milking operations required my vigorous personal exertions morning and evening, the matter wore a more serious aspect, and I began to feel quite pensive and apprehensive. It is very well to talk of the pleasures of the milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness of the purple dawn; but imagine a poor fellow pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping himself for a scamper through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the heels of such a termagant as mine! ”

“ Sir Binks (who always piques himself on saying just the right thing) .—"A—what I like so much about the milkmaid, dontcherknow, is that your husband hasn't fallen into the usual mistake of painting a lady dressed up in milkmaid's clothes! She's so unmistakably a milkmaid and nothing else, dontcherknow!" ”

“ The milkmaid is a creature of the past. Now in farmhouses there is great difficulty in getting any girl to work. They want to go to the towns, or consider themselves too highly educated to do menial work. ”

“ On the first day of May, says a writer in the Spectator (vol. v.) , “the ruddy milkmaid exerts herself in a most sprightly manner under a pyramid of silver tankards, and, like the virgin Tarpeia, oppressed by the costly ornaments which her benefactors lay upon her.” These decorations of silver cups, tankards, and salvers were borrowed for the purpose, and hung round the milk-pails, with the addition of flowers and ribbons, which the maidens carried upon their heads when they went to the houses of their customers, and danced in order to obtain a small gratuity from each of them. ”

“ But see, the milkmaid is ready, and now, Cousin Frederick William, now I must go to the milkroom and measure the milk into the pans, and I will tell you, but nobody else shall know, I secretly take a quart cup full of milk, and take it to the calves' stable to the calf, from my Hulda. It ought not, indeed, to drink milk any longer, but be an independent creature, eating hay and chewing the cud, but it will just feel that the milk comes from its own mother, and be glad. ”

“ The milkmaids’ garland was a pyramidical frame, covered with damask, glittering on each side with polished silver plate, and adorned with knots of gay-coloured ribbons, and posies of fresh flowers, surmounted by a silver urn, or tankard. The garland being placed on a wooden horse, was carried by two men, as represented in the engraving, sometimes preceded by a pipe and tabor, but more frequently by a fiddle; the gayest milkmaids followed the music, others followed the garland, and they stopped at their customers’ doors, and danced. ”

“ Why do nott cows give less milk in a year than horned?’
‘I don’t!’ interposed the milkmaid. ‘Why do they?’
‘Because there baint so many of ’em,’ said the dairyman. ‘Howsomever, these gam’sters do certainly keep back their milk to-day. Folks, we must lift up a stave or two—that’s the only cure for’t.’
Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement to the cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield; and the band of milkers at this request burst into melody—in purely businesslike tones, it is true, and with no great spontaneity ”

“ At the end of Bishopgate-Street-Without a considerable crowd was collected round a party of comely young milkmaids, who were executing a lively and characteristic dance to the accompaniment of a bagpipe and fiddle. Instead of carrying pails as was their wont, these milkmaids, who were all very neatly attired, bore on their heads a pile of silver plate, borrowed for the occasion, arranged like a pyramid, and adorned with ribands and flowers. ”

“ To say nothing of the improbability of four milkmaids, all sleeping in one room, and all hopelessly in love with one blameless prig of an amateur gentleman farmer, what a shocking want of the sense of both humour and variety does he show in creating such a situation! ”

“ but there is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some time after she was sitting alone on the hillside and found the thimble in her lap. This confirmed her belief in its being the Fairies that took it away. In a like mysterious manner a person’s bonnet might be whipped off his head, or the pot for supper be lifted off the fire, and left by invisible hands on the middle of the floor.
The accusation of taking milk is unjust. It is brought against the elves only in books, and never in the popular creed. The Fairies take cows, sheep, goats, horses, and it may be the substance or benefit (toradh) of butter and cheese, but not milk. ”

“ The latter is a banana, the former an apple.
“Where are you going, my pretty maid?
I’m going a-milking, sir, she said.”
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. ”

“ If all the Mamas who don't buy City Dairy Milk would come and see how much care we take in clarifying, pasteurizing, and putting the Milk in "bottles air tight" and then keeping it cold until delivered, we are sure they would want to give their little girls and boys City Dairy Milk, no matter how much it cost.
Another thing Mamas should remember is that Milk contains just the nourishment that "Our Little Patrons" need, in just the proper proportions to "build up, to stay up, both body and brain," and this nourishment in Milk is in a form more readily digestible than in any other food. ”

“ A calf brought up on a milk-pail would learn to take its food at stated intervals, escape indigestion, heaves and hollow horn, and grow up into a gentle, courteous and productive adult; while the mother, segregated from an otherwise guzzling, irrational, worrying offspring, would chew her cud in the placid beatitude most essential to the production of the largest quantity of rich milk.
Marion listened silently, with a knowing smile, but when I had finished she remarked that I knew perfectly well that I was talking rubbish, and that the natural way of feeding anything was the right way. ”

“ The milk is all kept in great big pans in long rows. It's very cool inside, for the milk-house is built over a spring that bubbles away all the time, running out of the old stone milk-house down to the meadows, where the cows drink it and the little fish swim in it. I know, because one time when my right forefoot was hurt they put me out in the meadow and many a good drink I've had from that same little brook. The bottom is all bright little stones, and the ferns hang over the edge of the bank, and the little birds hop down and drink. Oh, it's very pleasant out there in the meadow. ”

“ Gertie milked thirteen cows, and I eighteen, morning and evening. Horace and mother, between them, milked the remaining seventeen.
Among the dairying fraternity little toddlers, ere they are big enough to hold a bucket, learn to milk. Thus their hands become inured to the motion, and it does not affect them. With us it was different. Being almost full grown when we started to milk, and then plunging heavily into the exercise, it had a painful effect upon us. Our hands and arms, as far as the elbows, swelled, so that our sleep at night was often disturbed by pain.
Mother made the butter. ”

“ The original milk of the land flowing with milk and honey; the high quality of which could alone have popularised so unappetising a combination. Try our milk! None others are genuine! Who can do without milk. Even whales can't do without milk. If any lady or gentleman keeps a favourite whale at home, now's their chance! The early whale catches the milk. Just look at our milk! If you say you can't look at the milk, because it's in the can--well, look at the can! You must look at the can! ”

“ I was perfectly delighted, because I got more milk from Winnie than either Gibbie or Dab has been getting. When I was in the mountains one summer I took regular lessons in milking, for the mountain folk milk beautifully, whereas the negroes are generally poor milkers. They never can take all the milk, and if you do not keep the calf to take the balance when the milking is over, the cow will go dry in a very short time. Leave a pint to-day and to-morrow there is that much less, and so on, a pint less every day. The cow is soon only fit to turn out to pasture. ”

“ The women do the milking. In fact, it is regarded as beneath the dignity of a man to milk, if not as a positive disgrace. The women milk cows, buffaloes, sheep, and goats. Butter is made from buffalo milk, which is given by the animals in large quantities and is exceedingly white. Since clabber is more highly prized than fresh milk, the housewife, as soon as she has finished her morning's milking,--they milk twice a day,--heats the fresh milk almost to boiling, allows it to cool a little, and then adds a table-spoonful of sour milk. ”

“ If you have no cellar that can be kept warm and free from the smell of vegetables, set your milk on a shelf, in a warm closet, where, of course, you will keep no vegetables or meats, as nothing is so easily impregnated with odors of all kinds as milk. Cover the pans or bowls with a fine net, to exclude dust or motes of any kind.
Thirty-six hours is as long as milk should remain unskimmed, summer or winter. Every hour longer, even though the milk may taste sweet, is insuring bitter butter. As you skim off the cream, stir it well each time. ”