Haste to the Wedding

The jig is older than the wedding song that gave it its name. It first appears in print as "The Small Pin Cushion" in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion (1759), with no composer attached; the present title only took hold after 1767, when the song "Come, Haste to the Wedding" — also known as "Rural Felicity" — was set to the melody in the pantomime The Elopement. Robert Bremner printed it again as "Croagh Patrick" in his 1769 collection of Scots reels. Where it actually began is more tradition than documented fact, and the tune long ago settled into English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, and American playing alike, with Scottish, Cape Breton, and American settings sitting alongside the Irish ones.