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." In a curious German account of London and London life, written by Otto Von Rosenberg, and published at Leipzig in 1834, is a picture of a milkmaids' May dance; but in London it had become a chimney-sweeps' performance in place of one of milkmaids. In the country it maintained its character as a festival of dairymaids. Rosenberg thus describes it: "A hobbledehoy youth leads the procession with a three-cornered cocked hat on his head, pasted over with gilt paper. Eyebrows and cheeks are strongly marked with paint. A coat of gay colour flaps about his body, and this coat is imitated from the uniform of a French field-marshal, and is sown over with flowers and ornaments of gilt paper. Over his right shoulder hangs a red silk band, to which a wooden sword is attached. His knee-breeches and stockings are white. He is followed by a figure from head to toe buried under a conical structure, which is woven round with fresh may, and at the summit has a crown. This object has no other purport than to hobble after the rest.