Lyr/Tune Req: Maid with the Milking Pail

Subject: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: GUEST,Lampredi
Date: 19 Apr 05 - 05:32 PM

I am looking for words and music for: The Maid with the Milking Pail.
It s mentioned in Samuel French's edition of the play "Our American Cousin"
Some searching in standard resources has yielded nothing.
thanks,
Lampredi

Subject: RE: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 05 - 06:22 PM

And of course we all remember that play, Our American Cousin!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 20 Apr 05 - 04:16 AM

FWIW, a quick Google suggests that it may be a setting of "The Pretty girl milking her cow".

Regards

Subject: RE: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Apr 05 - 04:35 AM

You can find the entire script of Our American Cousin here (click) you can amaze your friends and relations by informing them that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while watching Act III, Scene 2, of this play. The script calls for "Maid with the milking pail" to be sung during the second scene of Act II. I even found out that there's an 1846 book called The maid with the milking pail, a ballad, the poetry by J. B. Buckstone.

I looked through Levy, the Library of Congress, and 14 volumes of 19th-century songs - but I can't find the damn milkingpail song.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 20 Apr 05 - 04:44 AM

The song 'The Maid with the Milking Pail' is in the British Library catalogue as being by Edward Fitzwilliam with 'poetry' by J B Buckstone (1802-1879). Buckstone, who also wrote a comedy with the same name, was a famous actor-manager and playwright. He also wrote 'The Green Bushes' a play with a song that has since turned up occasionally as 'trad'.

Subject: RE: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Apr 05 - 05:26 AM

Yes - I see the references to the play and "ballad" alright. There are also contemporary references to an "Irish jig" of that name. The "Pretty Girl milking.." (a.k.a. Cailín Deas crúite na mbó" is in jig time - which is what started me thinking.

Regards

Subject: RE: Lyr/Tune Req: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: GUEST,Lampredi
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 01:27 AM

Thanks for your effort. I am producing the play and we are going to have to use a different song because we can't find the damn thing either.
Lampredi

Subject: RE: Lyr/Tune Req: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 10:25 AM

If you still need to find 'another song' this one would at least predate the American Cousin and thus be plausible.

Dim recollection that one of the Williamsburg songbooks (source for the ballads sung in the colonial taverns at Colonial Williamsburg) had a charming and easily learned song, here's the first verse lyric:

Two maidens went milking one day,
two maidens went milking one day,
and the wind it did blow high
and the wind it did blow low,
and it tossed their pails to and fro, fa-la-la,
and it tossed their pails to and fro.

Subject: RE: Lyr/Tune Req: Maid with the Milking Pail
From: GUEST,Small Bird or Two
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 10:33 AM

It's in the DT, this link will lead you to the full text and some entries in the forum about it.

A Small Bird or Two