Study Edition · Essay 7
A Fair and Happy Milkmaid
Source: Overbury's Characters (6th ed., 1615), in Henry Morley (ed.), Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (1891). Text from Project Gutenberg #10699. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
The most famous of the Overbury “characters,” and the opposite of the chambermaid: an idealised country girl whose beauty is natural, whose days are full of honest work, and whose mind is untroubled. It is a prose poem of rural innocence. Like the chambermaid, it begins without a subject: read the title as the first words (“A fair and happy milkmaid is…”).
15 sentences: 0 simple, 11 moderate, 4 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- wencha young country woman (not insulting here)
- face physiccosmetics and beauty treatments
- out of countenanceput to shame; embarrassed
- commendto recommend; to praise
- apparelclothing
- tissuea rich fabric woven with gold or silver thread
- arrayeddressed
- innocencyinnocence
- chanticleera rooster (from the name of the cock in Chaucer)
- curfewthe evening bell signalling bedtime
- haycocka small heap of hay in a field
- sufferto allow
- braveryfine, showy clothes
- physicmedicine
- chirurgerysurgery
- efficacyeffectiveness; power to work
- palledmade stale or flat
- cogitationsthoughts
- winding-sheetthe cloth a corpse is wrapped in for burial
The Essay
Is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all face physic out of countenance.1 She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore does not mind it.2 All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge.3 The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue; for though she is not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing.4 She does not, with lying long a-bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions; Nature has taught her too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul; she rises therefore with chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes lamb her curfew.5 In milking a cow and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment off her palm to taint it.6 The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them.7 Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new made haycock.8 She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter's evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune.9 She does all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, because her mind is to do well.10 She bestows her year's wages at next fair; and, in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency.11 The garden and beehive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the longer for it.12 She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill because she means none; yet, to say truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations.13 Lastly, her dreams are so chaste that she dares tell them: only a Friday's dream is all her superstition; that she conceals for fear of anger.14 Thus she lives, and all her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.15
Sentence Notes
In plain English: She is a country girl who is so far from using cosmetics that a single glance from her makes all the beauty products in the world look embarrassing.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A witty reversal: make-up is meant to shame plain faces, but her natural face shames the make-up.
Reference & context: Grammar: character sketches often begin without a subject; the title supplies it.
In plain English: She knows that good looks are only a silent speaker on behalf of virtue, so she doesn't care about them.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Beauty as a mute advocate: it can point toward goodness but can't argue for it.
Modernized: minds it not → does not mind it
In plain English: Her good qualities sit in her so quietly that it's as if they had crept into her without her noticing.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A beautiful description of unselfconscious virtue: goodness that doesn't know it is good.
In plain English: What lies inside her clothes (that is, herself) is worth far more than the most expensive fabric on the outside. She doesn't wear silk, but she is dressed in innocence, which is far finer.
Reference & context: “The spoil of the silk-worm” is a poetic way of saying silk: what is taken from the worm.
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: She doesn't ruin her looks and her character by lying in bed late. Nature has taught her that too much sleep rusts the soul, so she gets up when her mistress's rooster crows and goes to bed when the lambs do.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: “Rust to the soul” turns laziness into slow corrosion. It's a memorable image.
Reference & context: Literary: Chanticleer is the proud rooster in Chaucer's “Nun's Priest's Tale” (see Dryden's essay on Chaucer, No. 17 in this series). The curfew was a bell rung in the evening.
Modernized: doth not → does not; hath → has
In plain English: When she milks a cow, her hands are so clean and sweet that the milk seems whiter and sweeter for it, because no perfumed glove or scented hand-cream has ever rubbed off her palm into it.
Reference & context: Fashion: fine ladies wore gloves lined with almond paste overnight to whiten and soften their hands.
In plain English: When she harvests, the golden ears of wheat fall and kiss her feet, as if they wanted to be tied in bundles and led away captive by the very hand that cut them down.
Reference & context: The image is of a conqueror and willing captives: the sheaves are “bound” like prisoners. “Corn” in British English means any grain, especially wheat.
In plain English: Her breath is natural, not perfumed, and all year round it smells of June, like freshly cut hay.
In plain English: Work makes her hands hard and pity makes her heart soft. On early winter evenings, sitting at her cheerful spinning wheel, she sings in defiance of the dizzy Wheel of Fortune.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A perfect balance of opposites (hard hand, soft heart), followed by a pun on two kinds of wheel.
Reference & context: Literary: the Wheel of Fortune, turned by the goddess Fortuna and raising people up and throwing them down, comes from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. The writer contrasts it with her humble spinning wheel.
In plain English: She does everything so gracefully that it seems her very innocence won't let her do wrong, because she always intends to do right.
Modernized: doth → does
In plain English: She spends her whole year's wages at the next fair, and when choosing clothes she values modesty above any fancy finery.
Reference & context: Social history: farm servants were usually hired for a year at a time and paid at the end, often at a hiring fair.
In plain English: Herbs from the garden and honey from the hive are her only medicine, and she lives longer because of it.
Reference & context: A sly joke at the expense of 17th-century doctors: avoiding them was often the healthiest choice.
In plain English: She isn't afraid to go out alone at night to let the sheep out, and she fears no harm because she intends none. In truth she's never alone, because old songs, honest thoughts and prayers keep her company. Her prayers are short, but they work, because no idle thoughts follow to spoil them.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A moral idea compressed into a few words: an innocent mind does not imagine danger.
In plain English: Finally, her dreams are so innocent that she's happy to tell them. Her only superstition concerns Friday-night dreams, which she keeps secret for fear of bad luck.
Reference & context: Folklore: an old rhyme said “Friday's dream on Saturday told / Is sure to come true, be it never so old.” To stop a dream coming true, you didn't tell it.
Modernized: dare → dares
In plain English: That is how she lives, and her only worry is that she might die in spring, so that there will be plenty of flowers to scatter on her burial shroud.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The ending treats even death with simple, cheerful grace. It is the last stroke in the portrait of a life without anxiety.
Modernized: Thus lives she → Thus she lives
Fun Fact
This sketch was so loved that Izaak Walton quoted it in The Compleat Angler (1653), where a fisherman praises “Sir Thomas Overbury's milkmaid.” But Overbury almost certainly didn't write it. He was poisoned in 1613, and the milkmaid first appeared in the 1615 edition of his Characters. Scholars attribute it to John Webster, author of the blood-soaked revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. So this gentle portrait of innocence was probably written by one of the darkest dramatists of the age.