Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Popular music of the olden time > Volume 1

KEIQNS OP JAMES I. AND CUARLE6 I.
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Cheerfully.
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Down in the North Coun - try, As an - cient re - ports do
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tell, There lies a fa-mous country town, Some call it merry Wakefield, And
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in this coun - try town, A
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far - mer there did dwell, Whose
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daugh-ter would to mar-ket
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Her trea - sure
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The following is the version of the same tune, which is entitled Tlie Merry Milk-
maids in the second Yolume of The Dancing Master. It was formerly the custom
for milkmaids to dance before the houses of their customers in the month of May,
to obtain a small gratuity ; and probably this tune, and The Merry Milkmaids in
green, were especial favorites, and therefore named after them. To be a milkmaid
and to be merry were almost synonymous in the olden time. Sir Thomas
Overbury's Character of a Milkmaid, and some allusions to their songs, will be
found with the tune entitled The Merry Milkmaids in green. The following
quotations relate to their music and dancing.
In Beaumont and Fletcher's play, The Coxcomb, Nan, the milkmaid, says —
" Come, you shall e'en home with us, and be our fellow ;
Our house is so honest !
And we serve a very good woman, and a gentlewoman ;
And we live as merrily, and dance o' good days
After even-song. Our wake shall be on Sunday :
Do j'ou know what a wake is ? — we have mighty cheer then," &c.
Pepys, in his Diary, 13th Oct., 1662, says, " With my father took a melan-
choly 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."