Milkmaids, Ploughmen, and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Milkmaids, Ploughmen, and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Britain

"John and Nell.
"As Nell sat underneath her cow,
Upon a cock of hay,
Brisk John was coming from the plough,
And chanc'd to pass that way:
Like lightning to the maid he flew,
And by the hand he squeez'd her;
Pray John, she cry'd, be quiet do,
And frown'd—because he teaz'd her.
Young Cupid from his mother's knee,
Observ'd her female pride,
Go on and prosper,
John, says he,
And I will be your guide.
Then aim'd at Nelly's breast a dart,
From pride it soon releas'd her,
She faintly cry'd I feel love's smart,
And sigh'd—because it eas'd her.¹

This is a nineteenth-century popular song from a chapbook printed by W. Scott in Greenock. The imagery is very bawdy—the double entendre of Nell's sitting on a "cock" of hay would have been all too clear to those who read or listened to the song when it was first published. Nell's sighing at the end of the poem and the ease she feels afterward also carry a reference to the act of lovemaking. Even before the song began, the occupations of the two protagonists, a milkmaid and a ploughman, would have immediately led the audience to expect a story about sex.

The stereotypes of milkmaid and ploughman enjoyed a wide popular appeal throughout the long eighteenth century in Britain (the period that extended from the Revolution of 1688 to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815). It represented an ideal of peasant beauty and sexual attractiveness that found expression in a variety of sources. This essay analyzes rural identities and considers the stereotypes of the ploughman and milkmaid in the culture of eighteenth-century Britain as a coherent whole, since English, Scottish, and Anglo-Irish sources employed rural stereotypes in similar ways with only minor cultural variants. In the eighteenth century milkmaids and ploughmen were stock characters used to represent gendered professions of the rural working class. Sexual stereotypes of this class often focused on these two figures; indeed, there existed longstanding metaphors for sexual behavior based on the action of ploughing for men and the action of milking for women.

In eighteenth-century songs milking the cow was often a metaphor for masturbation. In "The Pretty Milkmaid" the milkmaid asks her suitor to let go of her hand because she "must go milk the kine," and he replies, "If that my Dame would not me blame, / I'd freely give thee mine."² In "The Milk Maid" we find the following verse: "Young Collin so lov'd with his flail, / Shewn it to fill her milking pail."³ In an untitled song of 1750 a lover seduces the country maid Molly by offering her milk, curds, cheese-cake, and custards. He then rewards her favors by settling her in a copyhold worth £40 a year and provides her with an income of £20.⁴

Metaphors of ploughing also appeared regularly in novels and popular songs of the eighteenth century. The use of ploughing for bawdy purposes was elaborate and sophisticated. One song advises girls that ploughmen could not be trusted because "They're used so much to ploughing their seed for to sow, / That under your apron it is sure for to grow."⁵ The song "The Ploughman" from the 1820s, told from a female point of view, includes the oxen as a sexual metaphor:

As I was walking in a field,
I chanced to meet a plowman,
I told him I would learn to till,
If that he would prove true man. (refrain)
He said my dear, take you no fear,
But I will do my best, O,
I'll study for to pleasure thee,
As I have done the rest, O. (refrain)

The ploughman assures the...