Miller of Dee is a traditional

Traditional music

Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...

 folk song (Roud

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 #503) from the Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

 area in the north-west of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It is often titled "The Miller of the Dee".

The song was originally part of Isaac Bickerstaffe

Isaac Bickerstaffe

Isaac Bickerstaffe or Bickerstaff was an Irish playwright and Librettist.-Early life:Isaac John Bickerstaff was born in Dublin, on 26 September 1733, where his father John Bickerstaff held a government position overseeing the construction and management of sports fields including bowls and tennis...

's play, "Love in a village" (1762). Subsequently other versions of Bickerstaffe's original song were made by various other poets.

The city of Chester stands on the River Dee

River Dee, Wales

The River Dee is a long river in the United Kingdom. It travels through Wales and England and also forms part of the border between the two countries....

 and a weir was built across the river here in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 to maintain high water levels for several water mills which stood on its banks.

The River Dee rises high up in the Berwyn

Berwyn range

The Berwyn range is an isolated and sparsely populated area of moorland located in the north-east of Wales, roughly bounded by Llangollen in the north-east, Corwen in the north-west, Bala in the south-west, and Oswestry in the south-east.The Berwyn range also played its part in causing King Henry...

 mountains of Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 and enters the Dee Estuary

Dee Estuary

The Dee Estuary is a large estuary by means of which the River Dee flows into Liverpool Bay. The estuary starts near Shotton after a five miles 'canalised' section and the river soon swells to be several miles wide forming the boundary between the Wirral Peninsula in north-west England and...

 on the outskirst of Chester.