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WHERE ARE OUR DAIRYMAIDS?

A SONG OF VANISHED SUMMER.

    ["What has become of our Dairymaids?”—­Newspaper Question.]

AIR—­“THE DUTCHMAN’S LITTLE DOG.”

  O where and O where is our Dairymaid gone? 
    O where, O where can she be? 
  With her skirts cut short and her hair cut long,
    O where, and O where is she?

  Well, Summer is gone, and so is the Sun,
    And farming is nought but a bilk. 
  When our Butter is Dutch, and our Cheese is Yank,
    Why, why should they leave us our Milk?

  Our brave Queen BESS, as the Laureate says,[1]
    Might wish that a milkmaid were she;
  Whilst MAUDLIN in WALTON’s bucolical days
    Could troll forth her ballad with glee.

  But, alas! for the days of the stool and the churn,
    And the milking-pails brass-bound and bright! 
  There is much to do and but little to earn
    In the Dairy, once IZAAK’s delight.

  Now Companies deal with the lacteal yield,
    And churns clank o’ night at Vauxhall,
  Who dreams with delight of the buttercup’d field,
    Or Dun Suke in her sweet-smelling stall?

  Milking the Cow, and churning the milk
    Made work for the maids long ago,
  But possible Dairymaids now dress in silk,
    That’s where our Dairymaids go.

  Ah!  DOLLY becomes a mechanical drudge,
    And SALLY—­a something much worse. 
  Through cowslip-pied meadows to merrily trudge
    Won’t fill a maid’s heart, or her purse.

  The meadow at eve and the dairy at morn,
    And a song—­from KIT MARLOW—­between,
  Would fire a fine-dressed modern MAUDLIN with scorn,
    And move modish MOLLY to spleen.

  The Dairymaid’s true “golden age” is long fled
    With Summer, and pippins and cream;
  Like little Bo-Peep and Boy-Blue, it is dead,
    Save as parts of a pastoral dream.

O where and O where is our Dairymaid gone? 
O where, and O where can she be? 
Well, they make cockney shop-girls of PHILLIS and JOAN,
And I guess that they make such with she!

[Footnote 1: 

            “I would I were a milkmaid
  To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake and die.”

TENNYSON’s Queen Mary.]

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A MATTER OF CORSET.—­At Sydenham, Ontario (it is stated), the Corset has been declared to be “incompatible with Christianity!” If some of our fashionable dames uttered their innermost feelings, they would doubtless reply, “So much the worse for—­Christianity.”  It is so obvious that many modish Mammas care much more for their daughters’ bodices than their souls.

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[Illustration:  MR. PUNCH ON TOUR.  HE ARRIVES AT KINGSTOWN BY THE IRISH MAIL.]