> Eliza Carthy > Songs > Miller and the Lass
The Miller and the Lass
[
Roud 1128
; Master title: The Miller and the Lass
; Ballad Index ReSh063
; Mudcat 16135
; trad.]
Gordon McIntyre with a chorus of Martyn Wyndham-Read, Danny Spooner and Peter Dickie sang The Miller and the Maid in 1966 on their Australian album A Wench, a Whale and a Pint of Good Ale.
Gordon [MacIntyre] put the tune to a text collected by Cecil Sharp and printed in James Reeves' The Idiom of the People. It is a good example of what Reeves has called the “lingua Franca”, the colloquial sexual symbolism of the English countryside.
George Dunn sang The Miller's Song in a recording made by Bill Leader in December 1971. It was published in 1975 on his eponymous Leader album George Dunn. Another recording made by Roy Palmer in July 1971 was included in 2002 on Dunn's Musical Traditions anthology Chainmaker. Roy Palmer and Rod Stradling commented in the latter album's booklet
This is one of the songs first recalled by George Dunn (in March 1971) and one of the last recorded by him (in January 1975, three months before his death). He greatly relished singing this marvellously life-affirming piece which, after being noted a handful of times between them in the early years of the twentieth century, though not published, by Sharp (in Somerset) and Gardiner (in Hampshire), became decidedly rare. An equally rare early version appeared in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (4 vols, 1787-1803), iii, no. 481. George's is the only known recording of the song.
SM (first four verses), p. 44, Roy Palmer (ed.), Everyman's Book of English Country Songs (1979), p. 135 (five verses)
Cf: Sharp, ed. Karpeles, no. 185 A and B; Gardiner, in Frank Purslow, ed., The Constant Lovers (1972), p. 60.
Eliza Carthy sang Miller and the Lass in 1998 on her album Rice with Saul Rose playing melodeon and singing chorus and Ed Boyd playing guitar.
Andy Turner found The Maid and the Miller in Roy Palmer's 1972 book Songs of the Midlands and sang it as the 23 March 2014 entry of his project A Folk Song a Week.
Lyrics
The Miller and the Maid in The Idiom of the People | Gordon McIntyre sings The Miller and the Maid |
---|---|
A brisk you lass so brisk and gay |
A brisk you lass, so brisk and gay, Chorus (repeated after each verse): She'd a peck of corn all for to grind |
But alas last the miller he did come in |
When at last the miller came in “I've a peck of corn all for to grind |
“Come sit you down, my sweet pretty dear, |
“Come sit you down, my sweet pretty dear, |
Then she sat down all on a sack, |
Then she sat down all on a sack, |
Then he got up the mill to grind |
Then an easy up and down, |
“Then go you home, my sweet pretty dear, |
“Now go you home, my sweet pretty dear, She swore she'd been ground by a score or more |
George Dunn sings The Miller's Song | Eliza Carthy sings Miller and the Lass |
A bonny lassie bright and gay |
There was a buxom and a brisk young lass, |
Chorus (repeated after each verse): |
Chorus (repeated after each verse): |
At last the miller he came in; |
At last the miller boy he did come in, |
“My stones are up, my water's low, |
“Come, sit you down, my sweet pretty dear |
So she sat down on a sack, | |
“Now you go home, my pretty dear, | |
Said this bonny lass, still blithe and gay, |
Acknowledgements
Transcribed from the singing of Eliza Carthy by Kira White. Thanks also to Steve Willis for further assistance.