Milkmaid’s Dance
—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. Of late years the plate, with the other decorations, was placed in a pyramidical form, and carried by two chairmen upon a wooden horse. The maidens walked before it, and performed the dance without any incumbrance. Sometimes in place of the silver tankards and salvers they substituted a cow. The animal had her horns gilt, and was nearly covered with ribbons of various colours, formed into bows and roses, and interspersed with green oaken leaves and bunches of flowers.—Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, 1801, b. iv. p. 266.44
Pepys in his Diary, May 1st, 1667, says, “To Westminster; on the way meeting many milkmaids, with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly [Nell Gwynne] standing at her lodgings’ door in Drury Lane in her smock sleeves and bodice, looking upon one; she seemed a mighty pretty creature.”
In a set of prints called the Tempest Cryes of London, 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 ribbons, and ornamented with flowers. Misson, too, in his Observations on his Travels in England, alludes to this custom. He says: On the 1st of May, and the five and six days following, all the pretty young country girls that serve the town with milk dress themselves up very neatly, and borrow abundance of silver plate, whereof they make a pyramid, which they adorn with ribbons and flowers, and carry upon their heads instead of their common milk-pails. In this equipage, accompanied by some of their fellow milkmaids and a bag-pipe or fiddle, they go from door to door, dancing before the houses of their customers, in the midst of boys and girls that follow them in troops, and everybody gives them something.—Ozell’s Translation, 8vo, 1719, p. 307.
In Read’s Weekly Times, May 5th, 1733, occurs the following:—On May-day the milk-maids who serve the Court danced minuets and rigadoons before the Royal family, at St. James’s House, with great applause.
The following lines descriptive of the milkmaid’s garland are taken from Every Day Book, vol. i. pp. 569, 570:—
“In London thirty years ago,
When pretty milkmaids went about,
It was a goodly sight to see
Their May-day pageant all drawn out.
Themselves in comely colours drest,
Their shining garland in the middle,
A pipe and tabor on before,
Or else the foot-inspiring fiddle.
They stopt at houses where it was
Their custom to cry ‘milk below!’
And, while the music play’d, with smiles
Join’d hands and pointed toe to toe.
Thus they tripp’d on, till—from door to door
The hop’d-for annual present sent—
A signal came, to courtsey low,
And at that door cease merriment.
Such scenes and sounds once blest my eyes
And charm’d my ears; but all have vanish’d.
On May-day now no garlands go,
For milkmaids and their dance are banish’d.
See Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1855-9; also Every Day Book, vol. ii. p. 1562.
Notes
44 At Baslow, in the county of Derby, the festival of kit-dressing is, occasionally, observed. The kits or milk pails are fancifully and tastefully decorated with ribbons, and hung with festoons of flowers and ornaments of muslin and silk, and with gold and silver thread. The kits are carried on the heads of the young women of the village, who, attended by the young men and preceded by a band of music, parade the streets, and end the day’s proceedings by a dance. Jour. of Arch. Assoc. 1852, vol. vii. p. 208.