Haste to the Wedding

Recorded by The Country Dance Band Leader: Nan Fleming-Williams, under the auspices of the EFDSS

Duration: 2 min. 34.43 sec.

His Master’s Voice Folk Dance Series: English Folk Dances for Young People E.M.I. 7EG 8533 Side 1, Track 3.  [TEA1064: side 1; TEA1065: side 2] (n.d. 1959?)

Haste to the Wedding is a Double jig.  O’Neill Music of Ireland (1903), 184 (#987); alt. titles: A Trip to the Gargle; Let brainspinning swains. Kerr’s Cal. 17; Kerr’s Mod 13; Robertson Athole Coll. (1884), 145; as Rural Felicity in Aird’s Airs I.30; The Small Pin Cushion in Oswald, CPC 10, 8, is almost identical; identified by Bayard 2, #447, as “Haste to the Wedding”; however Oswald’s printing is earlier than the 1767 date of latter. It is entitled Carrick Fergus in Brysson’s Curious Collection (1791), and in Gillespie MS, 1768. A modern song (begins “I’ve polished the pewter, I tidied the kitchen”), by P. J. McCall, in Ward (1947), 68 (+ m.); 3×8 lines + var. cho. The old words (“Come haste to the wedding, ye friends and ye neighbours”) in Herd 1791, II.310; 1869, II.347 [title “The Country Wedding”], 3×6 lines + cho. (“Come, see rural felicity”, etc., whence the occasional name of the tune).