Milkmaids

10th October 2021

Liz: Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love social and domestic history, and trying things out and experimenting. So we normally start before our main topic by talking about what we’ve been working on recently, and what we’ve been making, so what have you been up to?

L: Well I continue to be in cable hell

H: Ok. Is this the jumper?

L: Yeah. I’m getting there, it’s just it’s very slow progress ‘cause it takes two hours to do four rows ‘cause of the amount of cabling

H: Wow

L: But!

H: That’s dedication

L: I have also started making, ‘cause I’ve got a lot of green left over, ‘cause I bought too much for my snail rug

H: Bought too much green

L: So I’m making myself a little wizard hat, ‘cause my D&D group is gonna all dress up because we have a session the day after Halloween

H: Oh my goodness

L: It sounds like some people are gonna cosplay their characters, which is cool, but I’m the DM so I’m gonna…just sort of generically magical, y’know?

H: I can’t believe you are not wearing the official D&D dungeon master costume

L: I tried to find it, I can’t buy it anywhere

H: Oh no!

L: I genuinely was going to try to buy it for Halloween this year, but I couldn’t get it

H: If anyone has not seen that, please look up “dungeon master costume”, and you’ll know which one it is when you see it

L: Yeah, it’s so you can dress up as The Dungeon Master from the cartoon series, which is just a whole thing in itself

H: How is the snail rug going?

L: It’s going well. I’ve done most of the grass, ‘cause I basically want to do as much as I can on it before I have to move it in the frame

H: Mm-hmm

L: So I’ve done most of the grass, the snail’s body, and now I’m starting the lettering, because it does say “effervescent”, for tumblr reasons

H: Amazing

L: Which I’m doing in hot pink, as a nice contrast. So it’s going well

H: I’m emotionally invested in this snail

L: I mean, it’s a grove snail, which is the best kind of snail. What have you been up to?

H: I finished my vest that I’ve been making

L: Oh!

H: It is very cute. I will put a picture of that on the Disc…not the Discord. The twitter. We have that

L: I mean you could put one in the Discord as well

H: I could also do that, yeah. It is very cute, it’s just a little cropped vest that I spun the wool and dyed it with hibiscus flowers, so it’s a dusty mauve colour, and then I knitted this little vest, and it is my first hand-spun hand-knitted garment, and it is very fun, and I’ve been wearing it all the time and being “hey, do you like my vest? I made it!”

(both laugh)

H: So

L: It is a very good vest, I’ve seen the pictures on Instagram

H: It is enjoyable. So yeah, I’m very pleased with that and, yeah, I’ve been just doing some general embroidery and stuff, and I will be making some little crocheted creatures, I think, for…my parents are involved with a community forest garden, and they do some of the, we have a village market every month that they have a stall at, that they sell the honey from the bees in the garden and stuff and raise money to get stuff for the garden and buy plants and things like that, so I decided I would make some stuff for their Christmas stall in December, so I’m going to make some little crocheted creatures and insects and things, but hopefully they will be cute, that I can donate to that

L: That sounds very fun

H: Yeah! And one of them’s going to be a snail, so snail snap

L: Woo! Snail club!

H: So, I thought I would talk a little bit today about the milkmaid in popular culture and history

L: Oh, ok

H: So I’m going to be talking about dairying, but a little bit more from the perspective of folklore and the milkmaid and why it’s such a thing. I haven’t really had time to do a whole timeline of research on something like we would normally, because I’ve just had my first assignment of my course to do, but I thought maybe we could just have a little conversation about some of the tropes relating to the milkmaid

L: Oh definitely

H: Yeah

L: I mean this is relevant to my interests, in a very roundabout way, ‘cause there’s a nursery rhyme about Edward Jenner which talks about milkmaids

H: Ah, ok. So, yeah, I did come across the Edward Jenner milkmaid thing. I do not know the rhyme, so yeah, shall we…I actually did just want to start by, I’m going to send you a couple of pictures, and I’ll put these up on the twitter as well, so that if you’re listening you can see them. So the first one that I’ve sent you, you should be able to see now, and then that’s the other one

L: Mm-hmm

H: So these are both paintings of milkmaids, and one of them is an 18th century painting by the artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and the other one is a 19th century painting by, hold on, I had it written down, here we go, one of them is a 19th century painting by the Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma, also of a milkmaid, an Indian milkmaid. So I was thinking at first maybe this might not be the most relevant subject globally, due to milk consumption, dairy consumption in different areas, but actually India is the world’s biggest consumer of milk, cows’ milk

L: Interesting

H: Yeah. Which does actually make a lot of sense because there’s a lot of famous Indian food and Indian ingredients that are made from cows’ milk, for example ghee, or paneer that is used in a lot of traditional teas

L: Oh yeah, I guess it’s just surprising because of the whole people being able to have milk as an adult is mostly a Europe thing

H: Yeah, I think because we associate it with more European and European-derived cultures, we globally can kind of forget that it’s also very popular in other areas, and across the world, even if cows’ milk isn’t popular in an area, goats’ milk might be, or sheep’s milk. Yeah. But I wanted to show you these paintings because they are very similar, actually, despite being of different subjects from different countries, because their both of, you know, idealised, attractive young girls who are milkmaids, and that’s kind of a thing in popular culture, the idea of the milkmaid as an attractive young lady, and particularly (trips over words). The Raja Ravi Varma painting might be a little bit more accurate to what a milkmaid would actually wear, I’m not sure, but the other painting, the 18th century French one, is certainly very pastoralist, very idealised

L: It’s very cottagecore

H: Yeah, extremely hashtag cottagecore, she’s got

L: It reminds me of the pictures of Marie Antoinette pretending to be a farmer

H: Mm, it’s like, she’s wearing this lovely gauzy bonnet and flouncy dress, and a nice red petticoat, it looks like. Yeah, so I just kinda want to explore maybe why this is, you know, why is the milkmaid such an attractive figure in poetry and art and stuff? And there’s quite a few traditional folk songs about the milkmaid, as well, so for example there is an Irish folk song I came across called “The Pretty Maid Milking the Cow”, and it was on a fine summer’s morning, of course, as many of these things are

L: (inaudible)

H: Unless it was one morning in May, which is the other option

L: Mm-hmm

H: And the singer is enamoured with this beautiful young girl that he’s met, who’s milking her cow, and he’s trying to get her to come and be with him, and she tells him to go away, essentially, and one of the lines is, she says “I like to live single and airy/’til more of the world I do see” which, you know I support this milkmaid

L: Yeah, that does kind of remind me of the one that I mentioned which, I was wrong, isn’t because of Jenner, but it’s just connected because he noticed that they didn’t get smallpox so they had pretty faces

H: Hmm

L: The most well-known line from it is “what is your fortune, my pretty maid/my face is my fortune, sir, she said”

H: Ah, ok, yeah, that leads me nicely to the next song, because this one she says that she doesn’t want to marry him, and then he goes a bit bitter and says well soon you’ll be old and not hot

L: (giggles) Charming! Now he really sounds like marriage material

H: I know, he’s not really helping the case. Anyway, I don’t think he gets the girl in that song, which, quite pleased about, to be honest. And then there’s a song called “Rolling in the Dew” or “The Milkmaid’s Song”, which

L: Think I can guess what that’s about from the title

H: You can indeed. It’s…there’s so many versions of this, some of which are more suggestive than others. One of them was recorded by Shirley Collins, who’s a wonderful folk singer, local to me as well, was involved in the folk revival in London in the 50s. Anyway, one of the refrains in this song is “it’s dabbling in the dew makes the milkmaids fair”, which again related to milkmaids are pretty, they use the morning dew to wash

L: It’s funny, ‘cause I have heard of that before as being a beauty treatment

H: Yeah. I’ve definitely heard of washing in the morning dew as a almost sort of ritual thing. Yeah, so there’s this whole thing about people being attracted to milkmaids, and I was looking into why this might be, and I came across a few reasons. This kind of came about as well because I was looking through, I have the book from the Tudor Monastery Farm series

L: Oh nice

H: Which is a good book, and they talk about the dairy has to be very clean, because any bacteria or anything can totally ruin your cheese or your butter or whatever and, I mean, if a dairy product’s off, you know

L: Yeah

H: There’s no ambiguity about it. So the temperature had to be regulated, it couldn’t get too hot or too cold in there, and it would have been very very clean, apparently the traditional way to clean a dairy was to clean it with salt and boiling water

L: I mean that’s gonna kill a lot of stuff

H: Yeah. Not soap, interestingly. Apparently no soap was used because it would leave a trace in the flavour of the dairy product

L: Sure

H: Yeah, so just your standard cleaning things, really, because anything else would…you could taste it in the final product. So, the dairy maid would have to be very clean, and have quite cold hands as well, apparently, for things like producing the butter, in squeezing out the last of the buttermilk and stuff

L: Mm-hmm

H: Apparently Isabella Beeton wrote that there is no machinery that is equal to a woman’s hand in preparing the butter. So yeah, very clean, cold hands. Apparently some dairies would have a…would divert part of a stream to flow through the dairy, which would keep it cool in summer

L: Provide fresh water as well

H: Yeah, really interesting, apparently some older dairies in Devon still have this

L: That’s very cool

H: Yeah. If you’re not familiar with things about the UK, Devon is quite famous for its cream and butter and stuff

L: Yes, we talked about clotted cream in a local larder, go listen to that one

H: Yeah, we did, the one about scones was it, as well?

L: I think the local larder was just clotted cream

H: Ok

L: One second and I will look up (inaudible)

H: Yeah, so I think maybe that’s part of it, comparative to other professions you had to be very neat

L: Episode 14

H: I think that would be…especially when we’re talking about later centuries looking back on a more idealised rural time, post-industrial societies looking back, I think that, probably, would be something that they would pick out as being an attractive thing, being very clean and neat, and cool hands and stuff. And then, also, I did come across the cowpox thing

L: Yes

H: So one of the reasons that Edward Jenner, inventor of the smallpox vaccine, came up with the idea is because there was this local legend that dairymaids never got smallpox, and they were protected by some mystical force. So yeah, do you want to tell us the rhyme?

L: Well I was mistaken in thinking that the “my face is my fortune” thing

H: Ok

L: Was, yeah, apparently that poem’s actually Tudor

H: Ah

L: But I mean medical history is my thing if you want me to say it anyway

H: Yeah

L: So yeah, when you get cowpox, which is very easy to get when you’re handling cows’ udders all day

H: Mm-hmm

L: And does not scar, and a general rule, you get antibodies that can also protect you from smallpox, and he, without knowing about antibodies, pretty much figured this out, and inoculated a local boy with cowpox, with permission of and payment to his mother

H: Oh, well that makes it ok

L: It was the 1700s

H: (laughs)

L: And then inoculated him with smallpox, and he didn’t develop smallpox. And before he figured out “oh we can”...before they figured out “oh we can give people a very small amount of smallpox”, which was a thing that some people were already doing

H: Oh right

L: He was like “we can give them cowpox and then rather than getting mild smallpox and still potentially being scarred, we give them cowpox instead”

H: That makes sense, if you

L: Which is why it’s called a vaccine

H: It makes sense that he wouldn’t be the only one to notice that people who got cowpox did not get smallpox. It seems a fairly easy connection to make

L: I mean as you said, it became a folkloric thing. But that’s why it’s called “vaccine”, ‘cause it comes from the Latin for cow

H: Oh right! I didn’t know that, that is amazing. So we owe cows a lot more than we thought

L: We really do

H: So yeah, there’s another thing, like you said, be less likely to have smallpox scars than relatively someone else maybe

L: Or die from smallpox. Less relevant, but also handy

H: So yeah, I think that’s one thing that went into it. One thing that I found interesting while looking at this from the book as well is that sheep’s cheese was also a big thing in Tudor times, which makes sense considering how profitable the wool trade was at the time, and particularly in Britain there were a lot of sheep, so it’s gonna be a substantial amount of sheep’s milk, that you might as well use to get another product

L: Definitely, yeah

H: So apparently that was seasonal, so apparently just after lambing season the milking season would begin, and then you would get these sheep’s cheeses which, I have had sheep’s cheese, and it’s very nice, it’s kind of a bit salty tasting, I think. Have you ever tried it?

L: Yeah, I’ve had sheep cheese. I don’t think I’ve had any particular, beyond stuff like manchego and pecorino, but I have to imagine it’s similar?

H: Yeah, i don’t think I’ve tasted enough cheeses to really compare, I’m not really a cheese connoisseur, but I like it, it’s really nice

L: It’s just, beyond those two, it’s harder to get hold of sheep cheese these days I think

H: Yeah, maybe it’s more like, I feel like with Europe having such a plethora of cheeses, regional cheeses, we don’t have as much variety in the UK, I think, although it’s coming back

L: I think we have a lot of variety, it’s just almost all cow cheese

H: Yeah

L: And a little bit of goat

H: Just a little goat, as a treat. I also was reading about alternative rennets that were used in the past. So rennet, if you’ve not come across it, is an enzyme from the stomach of a young calf that hasn’t been weaned, or a lamb, that is used to turn milk into cheese, essentially

L: Mm-hmm

H: And that was the main method, the most effective method, but obviously it can be quite difficult to get, some people don’t want to slaughter their young animals, because you might need them, so there were some alternative things that were used, and one of the is stinging nettles, and also sorrel and goosegrass. Apparently they do work, but not as well as rennet, which is why that continued to be the most popular method. But yeah, I found that quite interesting, I’d like to try…I mean, I’ve never tried cheesemaking, but I think this is something that is an effect of looking into a lot of interesting stuff for this podcast, if that we end up wanting to try all of it, right?

L: Yeah…

H: So maybe I’ll try cheesemaking one day and try out stinging nettles

L: I was just thinking though, with the whole “milkmaids are attractive temptresses”

H: Mm-hmm

L: Doesn’t Tess of the d'Urbervilles work as a milkmaid for a while

H: Yes! Tess is a dairymaid

L: Not at the start of the book, when the event happens

H: Mm-hmm

L: But she does become a milkmaid

H: Mmm. Yeah, and I think that’s very symbolic as well, you know

L: Mmm

H: I think because of all the cleanliness, part of it is that they’re symbolic of purity as well, in a way

L: Yeah, it’s quite a weird thing where they’re, like you said, they are temptresses, these beautiful, unobtainable women, who will have their way with you in the morning dew, but are also clean and pure

H: Yeah, there is kind of a double meaning about it. I mean, in this Dabbling in the Dew song, as well, one of the versions is somebody who the milkmaid is trying to get to come and sleep with her, and is sounding reluctant but I don’t think actually is, because it’s a folk song. Yeah, I dunno. But then in some of them the milkmaid is refusing and then in some of them it’s like “ah, but she is actually doing the seduction and, yeah, it’s all a bit nebulous, so that is definitely a point to make. I think…well, I was gonna say it can be about the post-industrial society idealising the rural past, but also some of these songs are really old, and this image of the pure milkmaid is very old as well, I think. Yeah, so I don’t know if that might have something to do with dairying traditionally being a woman’s job, because apparently women were favoured for milking the animals, because they were more gentle and able to do it better and get in there, and then also having cold hands, and delicate work, and that kind of thing, because dairying is very precise, and in fact apparently dairying was kind of quite a science, and the dairy maid would know a lot about, without knowing precisely why everything worked, like “oh this is an enzyme”, but they would know how to get rid of bacteria, and at what temperature is the best for making butter, all that kind of thing

L: They were chemists

H: Yeah, essentially

L: I do wonder how much of it is the classic thing of “well women are really good at this, and help make women money, therefore if she does it she’s a slut, because she doesn’t necessarily need a man, and that’s dangerous”

H: That is what the dairymaid says in that song, isn’t it, “I like to live single and airy,” so again, yeah, the dairy maid has specialist knowledge and is employable because of that, and maybe has a bit more choice. She can get hired pretty much anywhere she goes, because of that knowledge. There’s also a lot of witchcraft folklore related to dairying, so thinks about churning the butter, and if the butter won’t come, then it’s been witched

L: Oh no!

H: Someone is to blame. Yeah. And there was a bit of folklore that I found that thrusting a red-hot poker into a bucket of cream would help it to turn into butter. Apparently the temperature has something to do with it, so maybe that helps, I don’t know

L: Just a weird way to heat it up, I guess

H: Yeah, apparently there’s a lot of things that have an impact on whether or not the cream will change into butter through the churning process, they found that out later on, but all of these things

L: Well when you say “they”

H: Yeah, I dunno, people who do science and things, I don’t know. It was discovered more towards the early 20th century why a lot of these things happen, so it wasn’t witchcraft, but if the butter didn’t come back in the day it was probably witchcraft

L: I’m just thinking about Tiffany Aching, the Discworld character, ‘cause she’s a cheesemaker and a witch, and I’m convinced Pratchett did that on purpose, he did stuff like that

H: I wouldn’t be surprised, that would be amazing, but also, something that I like, I think, is that it is heavily implied that Tiffany being good at making cheese is not because she’s a witch, it’s just because she’s smart and observes what’s best for making cheese, which I like

L: “Just ‘cause you know how it’s done, doesn’t mean it isn’t magic”

H: Yeah

L: That’s what Granny Weatherwax says

H: I love so much of the shepherding folklore in the Tiffany Aching series as well, like the thing about shepherds being buried with a small piece of wool pinned to their jacket, so that that’s their explanation for why they didn’t go to church all the time, because they had to tend their flocks

L: Oh yeah, that’s a real thing, isn’t it

H: It’s a real thing, yeah, it’s documented, so I just love that detail a lot, and the bit about the shepherding hut on the hillside. There’s a museum close-ish to me, well it’s not exactly a museum it’s a country, sort of national park/countryside centre, but they’ve got a couple of shepherding huts from the 19th century and yeah

L: Oh that’s cool

H: It’s really interesting to just have a look at these big iron wheels on them. So yeah, ending up on a little bit of a tangent there but, yeah, I just kind of wanted to have a little exploration into the character of the dairy maid, the reality and the legend surrounding her, because I think it’s quite an interesting figure, interesting one to pick to idealise as well, and it was interesting to look into the actual what a dairy maid dealt with, and what she had to do, and what she had to know in order to be a good dairy maid, and it’s actually quite a lot. There’s a lot of knowledge, and that would make them a valuable person to have working for you

L: No, that was really cool

H: Yeah. So, yeah, I don’t know whether also it might be connected to having that special knowledge and this was a person who knows things. Secrets! Lady secrets!

L: Oh no! The worst kind!

H: Which might also have something to do with it being associated with the folklore, and the magic and stuff as well, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So perhaps a little bit shorter than our usual today, but what do we have for the local larder?

L: So, what we have is what’s known in Thai as khai mot daeng, or ant eggs

H: Ooh, ok. What do you do with them?

L: Well, in Thailand and Laos, especially, but also in other places in south-east Asia, you eat them

H: Ok

L: Yeah, it’s the eggs and pupae of weaver ants, specifically

H: Ok, why are they called weaver ants? Do they weave things?

L: They use silk to weave leaves together to make nests

H: Ooh, wow

L: They’re really cool

H: Yeah, sound so

L: Weaver ants are really cool. They work together to pull the leaves together, and then sew them together with larval silk, the same silk that you would use to make a pupa

H: Oh wow. Is that like spider silk?

L: I’ve not been able to find much information on the properties of larval silk, sadly

H: Mm-hmm

L: At some point we’ll probably do a silk episode, and then we can talk about it then

H: Yeah. Ok, wow, so what…what way do you eat the ants’ eggs?

L: So there’s one really popular way of doing it in Laos is ant egg soup, kaeng kai mot sop, I believe, in Laotian, which is the juice of a citrus plant, various ones are used, shallots, peppers, fermented fish, and leaves like gooseberry

H: Ok

L: And then you boil all that up together

H: Cool, I’ve never heard of that

L: Or you can have it in a spiced salad, is very popular in Thailand

H: Hmm

L: But because they create acetic acid, which is basically what makes vinegar taste like vinegar

H: Oh ok!

L: You don’t necessarily have to dress the salad

H: That’s the spice

L: Which I think is quite cool

H: Yeah, interesting. And are they particularly nutritious or anything?

L: They are. 8.2g of protein per 100g

H: Oh wow

L: Which is very high

H: I mean, yeah, that makes sense, if the thing has a lot of protein, eat the thing

L: But also a lot less fat than things like eggs

H: Ah

L: Which is a similar level of protein. Well when I say eggs, chicken eggs, these are also eggs

H: Yeah

L: These are also a good source of B vitamins and various minerals

H: Oh right

L: Including niacin, which is cool

H: What does that do, particularly?

L: Well niacin is a thing that…so pellagra is a disease where you’re short on niacin

H: Ah, ok, I have heard of pellagra

L: You can get it a lot in a lot of developing countries

H: Mm-hmm

L: So the fact that there’s a lot of niacin in ant eggs is very cool

H: Is that related to the vampire legend, I’ve heard it to do with that?

L: I don’t know

H: Ok

L: I haven’t heard that, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t

H: I’m sure I’ve heard pellagra in conjunction with some kind of old monster legend like “ah it could actually have been pellagra”. I don’t know. I’ll look into that for a future podcast

L: It does make you more sensitive to the sun, apparently

H: Ok

L: But yeah, it’s kind of dying off now as a thing to eat, ant eggs, which is a shame, because it sounds like it’s a really cheap source of protein

H: Yeah

L: You can farm this kind of ant in places where you’re already farming for food, like on mango trees, or palm

H: Oh right

L: And you just give them extra food and sugar water so they don’t go elsewhere

H: Ok

L: And you can crack the nests open and get hold of the eggs

H: Oh gosh, that sounds like a job

L: But they do it in a way that doesn’t harm the adult ants

H: Ok

L: So you can reuse the same ants

H: Reusable ants

L: Yeah. Everyone loves reusable ants

H: Yeah. Ok

L: Yeah, it’s kind of dying off as a thing now, partly ‘cause it’s seen as sort of a country bumpkin kind of thing, and also ‘cause of Western influence making people less willing to eat things that we would see as odd, such as insects

H: Mm-hmm

L: But I dunno, I think it sounds cool

H: Yeah, I can definitely see why you would eat it, it sounds nutritious

L: It sounds nutritious and quite tasty. I saw one thing saying about putting them in omelettes, and I feel like that would be a really nice

H: Yeah, wow

L: There’s already a lot of protein in an omelette, but you’d have even more, and then that sourness to it I think would be really interesting

H: Mm. It is interesting how your upbringing and your cultural biases affect how you think about different things, isn’t it, because when I first heard you say “ant eggs” my first reaction was “oh gosh, that’s very different to what I would consider eating”, even though I know that caviar, for example, is a really prestigious food in Europe, and that’s fish eggs. That’s the same thing, but yeah, it’s just interesting thinking about that. I would definitely try it though

L: Yeah, it sounds quite tasty

H: Hmm

L: So yeah, that’s my brief local larder for this week

H: That was a good one. I liked that. It was informative on many levels. I know a new kind of ant

L: Yeah, weaver ants are cool

H: I’m gonna go look them up

L: Any animal that weaves is cool, weaver birds as well

H: Yeah

L: They properly sew the leaves together, it’s wild

H: Oh wow! Really cool, ok. I’m gonna go look that up

L: So yeah, we hope you enjoyed the podcast, if you want to support us we are on patreon as Bread and Thread, you can get access to monthly recipes and a discord server where we just chat about food and crafts and things

H: We are also on twitter, BreadandThread as well, where you can find pictures and things that we talk about in the episodes, find teasers for upcoming episodes, any news and things, and we are also on youtube, Bread and Thread, keeping our branding going

L: Yeah, we’re uploading old episodes to youtube. Once we catch up, we will also be uploading new episodes to youtube

H: Is there anything else we haven’t mentioned? Tumblr?

L: We’re also on tumblr

H: Tumblr

L: at Bread and Thread, which is all the same stuff as on the twitter. Slightly more interaction just because we’re both on tumblr more that we’re on twitter, I think

H: Yeah, I’d say so

L: If you want to say hi or request and episode or local larder, or anything like that, you can email breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com. And I think that’s everything

H: In that case, we will see you next time for more social history facts

L: Yeah. I’ve got a good episode lined up for spooky season

H: Excellent. Can’t wait