Thank You, Pretty Cow Lyrics
A child thanks a cow for the warm, fresh, sweet milk that goes on the bread and tells the cow what to eat so that the milk stays sweet. In the old book it is simply called The Cow. This page uses its first words, Thank You, Pretty Cow, so it is not confused with Stevenson's poem of the same name.
Thank You, Pretty Cow
Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread,
Ev'ry day, and ev'ry night,
Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white.
Do not chew the hemlock rank,
Growing on the weedy bank;
But the yellow cowslips eat,
They will make it very sweet.
Where the purple violet grows,
Where the bubbling water flows,
Where the grass is fresh and fine,
Pretty cow, go there and dine.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/thank-you-pretty-cow/
- Type
- Poems for Children, Animal Rhymes
- Tune
- A soft sing-song in rolling, regular couplets
- Best for ages
- 2 to 6 years
What Does Thank You, Pretty Cow Mean?
The poem is a thank-you note in verse. The first verse has the child thanking the cow for "pleasant milk to soak my bread", the bread-and-milk that children ate for supper, "warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white". The second verse is advice to the cow: do not chew the hemlock, a tall poisonous plant that grows on the "weedy bank", and eat the yellow cowslips (spring wildflowers) instead, because "they will make it very sweet". The word rank here means growing thick and coarse.
The last verse points the cow towards the best pasture: where the purple violet grows, where the water bubbles, where the grass is "fresh and fine". "Pretty cow, go there and dine." The advice is about what the cow eats, and the child is sure it makes a difference to the milk.
Not to be mixed up with Stevenson's The Cow, which begins "The friendly cow all red and white". The two poems are different and share only a subject.
History and Origin
The words are from Rhymes for the Nursery, in its 23rd edition of 1831, published in London by Harvey and Darton. The title page names its writers only as "the Authors of Original Poems". The collection first came out in 1806 and is credited to the sisters Ann and Jane Taylor, who also wrote the poem now known as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
The preface says the rhymes are designed to circulate in the nursery, and that the writers had asked whether ideas fit for a very young child could be put in rhyme and metre. This poem is their answer: the ideas are plain and the rhymes are simple.
Learning Activities
- Bread and milk: serve a small bowl of bread and milk, or just talk about what children eat with milk, while the first verse is read.
- Spot a cowslip: look at a picture of a cowslip, a violet and a hemlock plant, and decide which belongs to the cow's meadow.
- Rhyme pairs: clap on each rhyming pair: made and bread, night and white, rank and bank, eat and sweet.
- Meadow picture: draw the cow on a green field with the violets and the bubbling water from the third verse.