17. A pretty maid she to the miller would go
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No. 17
Title not Remembered
A pretty maid she to the miller would go
Merry a soul so wantonly,
A pretty maid she, to the miller would go
Whether her mother would let her or no
For says she 'ill have my corn ground small & full force
Then the miller he laid her against the mill hopper
Merry a soul &c
The miller he laid her &c
He pulled up her cloathes, and he put in the stopper
For says she 'ill have 'em ground &c
The miller he laid her against th a mill sack
Merry a soul &c
The miller he laid &c
While the stones went click a te clack.
For say she, &c
Annotations
Vic Gammon discusses this ballad in his book Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900 (Ashgate, 2008). For Gammon it provides an example of a type of metaphorical encounter which "draws its symbols from the world of pre-industrial craftsmen" (24). In these songs the "tools of the craftsman become the male organ and work become the sex act." Gammon points out the similarities to the song "The Miller and the Lass" (Roud 1128) which Cecil Sharp collected in 1906.
The ballad is also included in a discussion of representations of the miller in the eighteenth century by E.P. Thomspon in "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past & Present, No. 50, 1971, pp. 76-136.