Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid? Lyrics
"Nobody asked you, sir!" The milkmaid in this rhyme gets the last word, and generations of children have enjoyed hearing a proud gentleman put in his place.
Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid?
"Where are you going, my pretty maid?"
"I'm going a-milking, sir," she said.
"May I go with you, my pretty maid?"
"You're kindly welcome, sir," she said.
"What is your father, my pretty maid?"
"My father's a farmer, sir," she said.
"What is your fortune, my pretty maid?"
"My face is my fortune, sir," she said.
"Then I can't marry you, my pretty maid."
"Nobody asked you, sir," she said.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/where-are-you-going-my-pretty-maid/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Traditional
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid? Mean?
A gentleman meets a milkmaid on her way to work and asks her a string of questions: where she is going, who her father is, and how much money she has. When she says her only fortune is her face, he announces he cannot marry her. She answers that nobody asked him to.
My face is my fortune means she has no money or property, only her looks. Her reply shows she has far more sense than he does, which is the whole point of the rhyme.
History and Origin
The same question-and-answer conversation turns up in English folk songs as well as in nursery books, sometimes with extra verses in the middle. The nursery version kept it short so that the snappy ending comes quickly. It has been in Mother Goose collections since at least the 1800s, and it appears in The Real Mother Goose (1916).
Learning Activities
- Call and answer: an adult asks the gentleman's questions and the child answers as the milkmaid, saving the loudest voice for the last line.
- What is a milkmaid? Talk about how milk got from the cow to the table before there were milk trucks and supermarkets.
- New questions: let children invent their own questions and answers in the same pattern: "Where are you going, my little cat?"