Miller of Dee

☞ Public‐domain character. First appearance, Love in a Village, 1762. Possibly created by Isaac Bickerstaffe.

MILLER OF DEE. A jolly hardworking English miller who has a mill on the river Dee and who is so happy and content with his life that he attracts the attention of men of rank, including King Henry VIII, who comes out to meet him and express admiration. According to an 1886 text, the miller is vengefully abducted by the giant ghost of a flea he has killed, yet he nevertheless has a number of later adventures, notably when he plays an instrumental rôle in saving Toyville from the nefarious pirate Red Beard in 1906.

Most texts refer to the miller only as the Miller of Dee, the Miller of the Dee or the Jolly Miller, and what few sources document his real name are in disagreement; an additional stanza from 1777 to the original song refers to him as Ralph (Gold‐finch), a later text says his name is John Cole (Harlequin Jack Sprat), and an 1899 illustration for the original song depicts his mill with a sign thereon that identifies him as John Chump (Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes).

The miller is a married man according to the additional stanzas from 1777, and his wife appears in a number of subsequent stories. In the additional stanzas from 1776, however, the miller praises his mill by saying it serves as “ kindred, child and wife, ” which might be taken to mean that he is unmarried, but in fact his wife is mentioned in a number of later texts. In the 1855 song “ The King and the Miller of Dee, ” the miller has three children, and in the 1880 poem “ The Miller of Dee ” (as well as in the 1911 dramatization thereof), he still has three children, but by the time of the 1902 book Yankee Mother Goose, the miller has five children. According to Harlequin Jack Sprat, one of the miller’s progeny is Joan Cole, the wife of Jack Sprat, and according to a 1903 story, he has a daughter named Peg (Stories of Mother Goose Village), the same girl from the nursery rhyme “ Peg, Peg, with a wooden leg ” (HathiTrust).

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In the 1762 musical Love in a Village, the farmer Hawthorn sings an air about a “ Jolly Miller ” who “ work’d and Sung from Morn till Night ” and who attributes his great happiness and contentment to his personal philosophy of independence and self‐sufficiency: “ I care for Nobody no not I, / If no one cares for me. ”

In 1845, if not earlier, ….

In the week of 22 December 1855, The Illustrated London News records what is presumably a past episode in the life of the miller and his family … (“ King and the Miller of Dee ”).

Likely in the 1860s ….

In December 1880 ….

In the Christmas 1886 issue of The Northwestern Miller, ….

In 1896, the book Fifty Famous Stories Retold recapitulates in prose ….

In 1903 … (Stories of Mother Goose Village).

In 1906 … (Peter Poodle).

In 1911, the book The Land of Make‐Believe recapitulates in prose ….

In 1916 … (Midgets’ Grand Parade).

Public‐domain bibliography

See <http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/K229A.html>.