To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=110282
25 messages

Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding

10 Apr 08 - 06:29 PM (#2312467)
Subject: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: johnadams

I've always assumed that HTTW was a tune only but a BBC Radio 4 producer has asked me for a version with words. She's sure they exist.

Does anybody know of words to the tune Haste To The Wedding?

All help gratefully received.

J


10 Apr 08 - 06:45 PM (#2312478)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Jack Campin

One set of words goes with the alternate title "Rural Felicity". It's in the Gentleman's Bottle Companion, which is probably online somewhere by now.


10 Apr 08 - 07:01 PM (#2312490)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: johnadams

Thanks Jack. A search on Rural Felicity turned it up. It's a bit prissy but it's there.

In the meantime, I found a set of words sung by Shane Brady which sit a bit better.

Shane Brady recording

As part of the search I had to sit through a You Tube rendering of HTTW by The Corrs. Yuk! Sorry if anybody out there likes them but for me - all coy glamour and nothing special musically.

J


10 Apr 08 - 07:02 PM (#2312494)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: RTim

Here is one set of words I have found - but they are now exactly those I have seem in the past.
I remember finding a set of similar words years and years ago - but never used them because there are just too many to sing!!!!

Tim Radford

Haste To The Wedding.

Come haste to the wedding ye friends and ye neighbors,
The lovers their bliss can no longer delay.
Forget all your sorrows your cares and your labors,
And let every heart beat with rapture today.
Come, come one and all, attend to my call,
And revel in pleasures that never can cloy.
Come see rural felicity,
Which love and innocence ever enjoy.
2. Let Envy, Let Pride, Let Hate & Ambition,
Still Crowd to, & beat at the breast of the Great,
To Such Wretched Passions we Give no admission,
But Leave them alone to the wise ones of State,
We Boast of No wealth, but Contentment & Health,
In mirth & in Friendship, our moments employ
Come see rural felicity,
Which love and innocence ever enjoy.

3. With Reason we taste of Each Heart Stirring pleasure,
With Reason we Drink of the full flowing Bowl,
Are Jocund & Gay, But 'tis all within measure,
For fatal excess will enslave the free Soul,
Then Come at our bidding to this Happy wedding,
No Care Shall obtrude here, our Bliss to annoy,
Come see rural felicity,
Which love and innocence ever enjoy.


10 Apr 08 - 07:05 PM (#2312496)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Malcolm Douglas

'Come Haste to the Wedding' appeared as a song in The Elopement (Drury Lane, 1767, according to Chappell, English National Airs, 1840, no. 163). See Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, III, 3, 1938, 208-210, for background and some speculation on the subject.

Broadside examples at  Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

Come Haste to the Wedding

There is also a text, apparently taken from a modern arrangement, in the DT:  HASTE TO THE WEDDING (Rural Felicity): contains the unexplained comment 'Collected from Eunice Carew's songbook, 1790'.

The tune (as opposed to the song) has been claimed as both Irish and Scottish; Bruce Olson reckoned that the earliest known example was the Scottish 'The Small Pin Cushion'. I expect you already know that.


10 Apr 08 - 07:22 PM (#2312504)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: johnadams

Thanks Malcolm. That's just the sort of background a BBC Radio 4 producer should have fed to them!

J


10 Apr 08 - 07:40 PM (#2312524)
Subject: Lyr Add: HASTE TO THE WEDDING (P. J. McCall)
From: GUEST

There is also this lyric, much more down to earth.

HASTE TO THE WEDDING
Sung by Bridie Gallagher, written by P. J. McCall.

I'd polished the pewter, I'd tidied the kitchen,
My dresser looked white as a stack in the snow;
And here by the window my skirt I was stitchin',
For I'm very neat with a needle to sew.
Said I, "What's the use o' me mendin' my finery,
Till it is fit for a queen on her throne?
For it's oh dear! there isn't the sign o' me
Gettin' a man and a place o' my own."

[CHORUS:] 'Twas Haste to the Weddin'; and Haste to the Weddin',
I sang as I sat at the window alone;
Movrone, O! 'twas oft I was dreadin'
I'd not get a man with a place o' my own.

'Twas nearly made up once between me and Larry,
That lives o'er the Mountain o' Forth, by the bounds,
With forty-five acres o' land and a quarry—
He'd take me, and welcome, with ninety-five pounds.
When he couldn't get it, he said we'd regret it,
And then he got wed to a widow in town;
And it's oh dear, I lost Larry Petit,
A sensible man with a house of his own. [CHORUS]

I found in my first cup o' tea the next Monday,
A lucky red tea-leaf—some stranger to call;
I tried seven times, and he travelled on Sunday,
I wondered who was it was comin' at all.
Who was it but Lanty, last Sunday for Nancy—
He buried his mother last May in Kilcone;
And it's now, dear, I'll marry my fancy—
The boy o' my heart with a place of his own.

[CHORUS:] 'Tis Haste to the Weddin'; and Haste to the Weddin',
Not long I'll be sittin' and singin' alone;
For soon, dear, with young Lanty Reddin,
I'll reign like a queen in a house o' my own.


11 Apr 08 - 08:38 AM (#2312858)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Willa

Guest 7.40
Like that version! Any info on when it was written?


11 Apr 08 - 09:37 AM (#2312901)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Jack Campin

The Gentleman's Bottle Companion is on the web:

http://www.drinkingsongs.net/html/books-and-manuscripts/index.htm

but the version of "Rural Felicity" I had in mind isn't there. It was in a copy at the National Library of Scotland - I presume it must have been a later edition. Fairly typical late 18th century bawdy song. Fucking in a carriage as it bounces along through the countryside, if I remember right.


11 Apr 08 - 09:38 AM (#2312903)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Cool Beans

Thomas Hardy mentions it in "Under the Greenwood Tree" as one of five country dances played at a party. Probably the wordless version.


11 Apr 08 - 10:05 AM (#2312926)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: irishenglish

The first part of the lyric that RTim posted is the intro to Royal Seleccion No. 13 by Fairport on The Bonny Bunch Of Roses, or as Simon Nicol describes it, an instrumental medley that's got some words!


11 Apr 08 - 10:16 AM (#2312932)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: GUEST,Ebor_fiddler

There is a set of words in one of Dominic Behan's books. I think it is either "Ireland Sings" or "The Singing Irishman". I kave a copy at home and will check when I get there!


11 Apr 08 - 10:22 AM (#2312938)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Jack Blandiver

You know, I've been playing HTTW for over 30 years now (since hearing it on Times & Traditions for Dulcimer by Roger Nicholson, Jake Walton & Andrew Cronshaw) and ever knew it had words. A revelation for which I'm very grateful indeed.


11 Apr 08 - 05:17 PM (#2313280)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: GUEST

Dave Swarbrick with Fairport Convention sings a verse or two of it on either "Tippler's Tales" or "The Bonny Bunch of Roses O". It precedes an instrumental medley.


11 Apr 08 - 05:45 PM (#2313296)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: dick greenhaus

I's in DigiTrad. Search for Felicity.


11 Apr 08 - 06:04 PM (#2313311)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Malcolm Douglas

I've already mentioned that, and provided a link to it. With a bit of effort I found out who Jim Douglas is (the DT file doesn't say, nor does it give the full title or publishing details of his book), but is the text given copied from his book or taken from a recording? Has he recorded it? What is 'Eunice Carew's Songbook'?


12 Apr 08 - 01:49 AM (#2313474)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: GUEST

Sorry, Willa, the lyric is from Walton's New Treasury of Irish Songs and Ballads Part 1: Dublin 1968. They don't go in for notes on the songs or authors at all. However, McCall's dates are 1861-1919 and there is quite a bit of information about him on the net.


12 Apr 08 - 06:04 AM (#2313548)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Jim McLean

Malcolm, I got this from JSTOR: Early American Manuscript Music-Books
Author(s): William Dinneen
Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Jan., 1944), pp. 50-62
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/739535

Eunice Carew lived in the typical small New England town
of Norwich, Connecticut, located up the Thames River from New
London. Town records list two Carews resident in Norwich at
this time, Joseph, a "trader", and Simeon, or Simon, who had a
book-shop and bindery near the green between I790 and i8oo.4
Since Eunice compiled at least four manuscript music-books and
seems to have been interested in books generally, it is more than
probable that she was the daughter of Simeon, the book-dealer,
and was able to copy from music sold in the shop. Three of these
books copied in her hand are hymnals, one of which5 reveals a
definite interest in "fuging" tunes of the sort made famous by
William Billings.6 The fourth volume shows an interest in secular
music, as Miss Carew carefully wrote out 47 secular texts, including
music for 9 numbers, with the music usually a melody or a melody with accompanying bass line. The title-page of this volume
is decorated with rather elaborate scroll work and boldly marked
"Eunice Carew's Song Book, Jan., 1790". Two other dates in
1792, which appear in the same hand,7 indicate that this was not
a selection gathered in haste, but rather a carefully chosen group
of secular items, each with a definite appeal for the young lady.
The procedure of setting down only occasional melodies shows
the direct influence of method but not content of the "Select Songster", known to have been in the Carew library ...

There's quite a bit more.


12 Apr 08 - 06:44 AM (#2313560)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste To The Wedding
From: Willa

Thanks, Guest, that's helpful


13 Apr 08 - 06:01 PM (#2314527)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding
From: Jim Dixon

The version of HASTE TO THE WEDDING that begins "I'd polished the pewter, I'd tidied the kitchen" (posted by a guest, above) can be found in Songs of Erinn by Patrick Joseph McCall, 1899.


13 Apr 08 - 06:11 PM (#2314537)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding
From: GUEST

The version in Dominic Behan's book is the same as P.J. McCalls.


14 Apr 08 - 01:31 AM (#2314851)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding
From: Malcolm Douglas

Thanks for the details, Jim. Sadly I don't have access to JSTOR.


07 Jul 19 - 08:51 AM (#3999666)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding
From: GeoffLawes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgN6AowjApw&list=PLlJXLqrONQyb4vMlrKdFeJVzcgMPK4nOJ&index=16&t=0s

Haste to the Wedding sung by Margaret Barry


07 Oct 19 - 04:28 PM (#4012425)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding
From: GUEST,Andrew S Hatton.


08 Oct 19 - 03:44 AM (#4012463)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Haste to the Wedding
From: GUEST,threelegsoman

I uploaded a version of the song nine years ago on YouTube, the lyrics being as Tim Radford posted above:
Guitar: Haste to the Wedding (Including lyrics and chords)

(I originally posted it with on-screen lyrics and chords, but YouTube made their annotations obsolete in 2017, so I have had to add them below the information about the video.)