Dee Mills

If you had the rent of Dee Mills, you would spend it all. Dee Mills, in Cheshire, used to yield a very large annual rent. (Cheshire proverb.)

“There was a jolly miller

Lived on the river Dee;

He worked and sung from morn to night—

No lark so blithe as he;

And this the burden of his song

For ever used to be—

I care for nobody, no, not I

If nobody cares for me.ʹ”

Bickerstaff: Love in a Village (1762).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.