An excellent new play-house song, called, The bonny milk-maid, to an excellent new tune..
D'Urfey, Thomas
Milbourn, A.,-1708,printer.
[London] : Printed by and for A. M[ilbourn].,
[1695]
Anonymous; by Thomas D'Urfey. It appeared first in 1694 in his play "Don Quixote", titled "Song". In the 1719 collection "Songs compleat, pleasant and divertive", edited by Henry Playford and D'Urfey, which included many of D'Urfey's songs, it has the title "The bonny milk-maid". It has sometimes been treated as an adaptation of Martin Parker's "The milke-maids life", but only the general topic is shared; there is no similarity between the texts of the two poems (see J.W. Ebsworth, The Roxburghe ballads, v. 7, 1893, p. 24-26).
Verse: Ye nimphs and sylvian gods,
EBBA dates "1684-1695?"; Wing dates "1695".
Wing (2nd ed.),
ESTC
England London.