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THE PRETTY GIRL MILKING HER COW Lead vocal and guitar: Richard Fiddle: Peter

LYRICS:

The moon calmly sleeps on the ocean
And tinges each white bosom'd sail
The barque, scarcely conscious of motion
Glides slowly before the soft gale
How vain are the charms they discover
My heart from its sorrows to draw
While memory still carries me over
To the pretty girl milking her cow

Ye billows, beneath me now swelling
To you my hard fate I deplore
Though far from my oak-shaded dwelling
Ye bear me to some distant shore
Though the raging tempest may sever
My frame from thy cot roofed with straw
This heart shall adore thee forever
My pretty girl milking her cow

Ye breezes around me that hover
The tale of my woes ye may learn
And bear back the sighs of a lover
Who never again shall return
For next, when along the waves fading
The last blush of evening shall glow
Those waves will my sorrows be shading
My pretty girl milking her cow

The moon calmly sleeps on the ocean
And tinges each white bosom'd sail
The barque, scarcely conscious of motion
Glides slowly before the soft gale
How vain are the charms they discover
My heart from its sorrows to draw
While memory still carries me over
To the pretty girl milking her cow

NOTES:

This is a nautical version of an Irish song that I found in The Ancient Music of Ireland. These lyrics are credited to a "Miss Balfour" and have nothing to do with the traditional Irish song with the title Cailin Deas Cruite na mBo.

Interesting legend attached to "Cailin Deas Cruite na mBo." It was regarded in Ireland as an unlucky song. The story goes that a priest was called to administer the last rites to a dying man. On his way to the house, he stopped to listen to the singing of a beautiful young woman singing the tune of the above with the result that he was late in arriving at the house and the man had died. The story goes on to say that the "beautiful woman" was in fact the devil in disguise in order to prevent the priest getting to the man in time to hear his confession. It is also know by the first line "It Was On A Fine Summer Morning." The music is in a current songbook by Warner Brothers, called "51 Lucky Irish Classics" from their Great Songs of the Century series. The English lyrics are by Thomas Moore. The tune is "Cailin Deas", and air is in Bunting's Ancient Irish Music (1796). The original words are gaelic. There are more verses by Thomas Moore in old Irish songbooks that you can get in libraries, such as Irish Street Ballads by Colm O'Lochlainn.

It was on a fine summer's morning
The birds sweetly tuned on each bough
And as I walked out for my pleasure
I saw the maid milking her cow.

Her voice, so enchanting, melodious
Left me quite unable to go
My heart it was loaded with sorrow
For 'colleen dhas cruthen na mo'. (phoenetic English)

Then to her I made my advances
'Good morrow, most beauteous maid
Your beauty my heart so entrances.'
'Pray, sir, do not banter,' she said.

'I'm not such a rare precious jewel,
that I should enamor you so.
I am but a poor little milk girl.'
Said colleen dhas cruthen na mo.

The Indies afford no such jewels
So bright and transparently clear.
Pray, do not add flame to my fuel,
Consent but to love me, my dear.

If I had the lamp of Alladin,
Or the wealth of the African shore,
I'd rather be poor in a cottage
With colleen dhas cruthen na mo.