Cecil Sharp's Note 44 (1916)

No. 44. Dabbling in the Dew

This is a very popular song all over England, and I have taken down a large number of variants. The words, which vary but little, are very free and unconventional. I have therefore taken some of the lines in the text from Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes (p. 35). In some versions, it is “strawberry leaves,” not “dabbling in the dew,” that “makes the milkmaids fair”—which I am told, though I have not been able to verify it, is the version given in Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children (Boston, ed. 1719).

The tune is in the Æolian mode.

For other versions with words, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iv, pp. 181–285); Songs of the Four Nations (p. 58); English Folk Songs for Schools (No. 23); and Butterworth’s Folk Songs from Sussex (No. 9).