"The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow", in Gaelic "An Cailin Deas Cruidte na m-Bo" also known as "Pretty Maid Milking the Cow", "Pretty Maid Milking Her Cow", "The Valley lay smiling before me", "I Would I Were But That Sweet Linnet" or "The Flower of all maidens" is an Irish slow air in 3/4 time and A Dorian (Bruce & Emmett, O’Neill) or G Minor (Kerr). The parts are played AB (O’Neill) or AABB (Bruce & Emmett, Kerr). This tune is part of a popular and large Irish tune family and is used for numerous folk songs. This is very similar to the melody that Cathal McConnell used for "The Maid with the Bonny Brown Hair" on Boys of the Lough's album The West of Ireland. Norman Cazden collected the melody in the Catskill Mountains (New York) as "The Green Mossy Bands by the Lea" and discusses it extensively in his compendium Folk Songs of the Catskills. The melody was used for "Llanarmon" (a Welsh hymn), a Newfoundland song called "The Blooming Bright Star of Belle Isle", an 1888 London music hall song written by Lady Dufferin entitled "Terence's Farewell" and many others. Thomas Moore set his text "The valley lay smiling before me" to it. The air was played as a Retreat in the Union army during the American Civil War ("retreat" here does not mean a withdraw in face of the enemy, but rather a camp call signaling the end of the day’s assigned duties with the coming of dusk). It was printed in Bruce & Emmett’s Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide (1862), Clinton’s Gems of Ireland: 200 Airs (1841), William Forde’s 300 National Melodies of the British Isles (c. 1841), Kerr’s Merry Melodies, vol. 4 (c. 1880’s), O'Neill’s Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies (1903), Robbins Music Corp.’s The Robbins collection of 200 jigs, reels and country dances (1933) and Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer's Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982). It was recorded by Ensemble Galilei on Music in the Great Hall (1992).