Hi Rex,

It's a great tune - I can imagine it as a wedding song, now that you mention it, but I would never have thought of it like that before.

In Oz we have a song called "The Golden Gullies of the Palmer" with the same tune. It's a gold mining song, and it's quite possible that some of the American goldminers who came here in the Australian goldrush (late 1800's) brought the song with them and then new words were put to it.

I started a thread about a year ago on links between Oz and US tunes/songs - I'll see if I can find it.

Helen