“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. Formerly the operation took place in the meadows, where it was clean enough, and the feet were in the sweet grass. The milk-girl filled her pails, adjusted a hoop that they might not swing against and spill over her cotton dress, and carried the pails to the dairy, singing as she went. But the weather is not always bright, and it was not only unpleasant, but unsafe, to milk out of doors in the rain; so the cattle were driven under cover, and there the dirt speedily grew to be deep, and presently the girls found it intolerable to have to wade in mire, so the final stage was that they abandoned the milking to the men. Do the cows like it as well? I trow not. 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. They are an anachronism; for as soon as they know anything they know that no maiden all forlorn or all smiles, no maiden whatever, does now milk cows. And to conceive the idea of a “man all tattered and torn” approach and kiss such a milk-maid as occupies a position in an Aerated Bread Company’s establishment, is to demand of their young intelligences something too preposterous. Do you remember old Izaak Walton’s account of the milk-maid with her merry songs? How he asked her to sing to him. “What song was it?” she inquired. “I pray—was it ‘Come, shepherds, deck your heads’; or ‘As at noon Dulcina rested’; or ‘Philida flouts me’; or ‘Chevy Chace’; or ‘Johnny Armstrong’; or ‘Troy Town’?” The memories of the ancient milk-maids were storehouses of delightful old English ballads; now the only persons who know any are ancient silver-headed topers in taverns.