Annotation:Pretty Maid Milking the Cow (2)

Back to Pretty Maid Milking the Cow (2)

---

PRETTY MAID MILKING HER COW [2], THE (An Cailín Deas Crúidte na mBó). AKA and see "Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow (2)." Irish, Air (3/4 or 9/8 time). A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (Roche): AABB (O’Farrell). The tune is rendered in 6/8 time in Harding's Collection (appears as "Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow"), and as a waltz in O’Brien’s Boston-published Accordion Instructor (1949). Piper O'Farrell transcribed it in 9/8 time, but it is an air and not a slip jig. Irish-American uilleann piper and stage performer Patsy Tuohey recorded the air in 1919 as "Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow (2)." See also versions under title "Cailín Deas Crúidte na mBó."

"Pretty Maid Milking Her Cow" is also a popular broadside ballad [Roud Number: 3139], widely disseminated. Broadside lyrics [1] begin:

It was on a fine summer's morning,
When the birds sweetly sung on each bough,
I heard a young damsel a singing,
As she sat a milking her cow.
She sung with a voice so melodious,
Which made me scarce able to go,
To hear the young damsel then singing,
As she sat a milking her cow.
I right courteous then did salute her,
Saying, how my sweet am'rous maid,
I am your captive slave for the future.

The song was incorporated into stage and screen works, such as Irish playwright Dion Bourcicalt's melodrama of the The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen [2], first staged in New York in 1860. Hollywood songstress Judy Garland sang a version of the song of "Cailín Deas Crúite na mBó" for the movie Little Nelly Kelly (1940). Garland reprised the song in July, 1951, when she was booked for sell-out concerts at Dublin's Theatre Royal. It was also in a Universal musical called Strictly in the Groove (1942) with Ozzie Nelson's orchestra playing it as "Who's the pretty girl milking her cow?", sung by the Dinning Sisters (who later had a hit record with it around 1945 with a swing setting called “A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow”).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: P.M. Haverty (One Hundred Irish Airs vol. 1), 1858; No. 41, p. 17. O’Brien (Jerry O’Brien’s Accordion Instructor), 1949. O’Farrell (Pocket Companion), c. 1805; p. 19. Roche (Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 1), 1912; No. 40, p. 20.

Recorded sources: Columbia 33107-F (78 RPM), Dan Sullivan.

See also listing at:
Alan Ng's Irishtune.info [3]
See Judy Garland's 1940 movie clip where she sings the song [4]
Hear the Dinning Sisters' 1945 recording on youtube.com [5]

---