A gentle plea to a cow for her milk, offered in exchange for a silk gown. A soft, old-fashioned farmyard rhyme with a lulling repetition to it.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Cushy cow, bonny, let down thy milk,
And I will give thee a gown of silk;
A gown of silk and a silver tee,
If thou wilt let down thy milk to me.
About this rhyme
Text confirms the coaxing address and the promised 'gown of silk'; the tip quotes 'let down thy milk' verbatim.
A milking rhyme, the kind said to coax a cow into letting down her milk, with a gown of silk promised in return. It's a working chant that ended up filed among nursery rhymes anyway.
Mime the milking action on 'let down thy milk'.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition