The miller! the miller! the miller!
"Round and Round, the Mill Goes Round," is mentioned as an English
dance at the end of the seventeenth century. A song of "The Happy
Miller" is printed in "Pills to Purge Melancholy" (1707), of which the
first verse is--
How happy is the mortal that lives by his mill!
That depends on his own, not on Fortune's wheel;
By the sleight of his hand, and the strength of his back,
How merrily his mill goes, clack, clack, clack!
This song was doubtless founded on the popular game; but the modern
children's sport has preserved the idea, if not the elegance, of the
old dance better than the printed words of a hundred and seventy years
since. A variation of the same game is still familiar in Canada and
Sweden.[81]
No. 41.
_The Miller of Gosport._
That the prejudice against the honesty of the miller was not confined
to the Old World will appear from the following ballad:
There was an old miller in Gosport did dwell:
He had three sons whom he loved full well;
He called them to him, one--by--one,
Saying, "My--life--is--al--most--done!"[82]
He called to him his eldest son,
Saying, "My life is almost done,
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "my name is Dick,
And aout of each bushel I'll take one peck--
Of every bushel--that--I--grind,
I'll take one peck to ease my mind."
"Thou foolish son," the old man said,
"Thou hasn't but one half larnt thy trade!
The mill to you I'll never give,
For by such toll no man can thrive."
He called to him his second son,
Saying, "My life is almost done,
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "my name is Ralph,
And aout of each bushel I'll take one half--
Of every bushel that I grind,
I'll take one half to ease my mind."
"Thou foolish son," the old man said,
"Thou hasn't but one half larnt thy trade;
The mill to you I'll never give,
For by such toll no man can thrive."
He called to him his youngest son,
Saying, "My life is almost done;
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "I _am_ your boy,
And in taking of toll shall be all my joy;
That an honest living I ne'er may lack,
I'll take the whole, and steal the sack."
"Thou _art_ my son," the old man said;
"Thou'st larnt thy good--old--fayther's trade;
The mill to you I do--betide"--
And--so--he--closed--his eyes--and--died.
Another version finds its way to us from the West, and ends with an
uncomplimentary opinion as to the habitation of the miller in the other
world.