Merrily Kiss the Quaker

Most likely Scottish in origin, the tune has a long paper trail: the Dublin printers John and William Neal published a version as "The Ragg" in their A Choice Collection of Country Dances (1724), and Robert Bremner brought it into print in Scotland in his Collection of Scots Reels (1760). The Northumbrian musician William Vickers noted it as "The Quaker's Wife" in his 1770 manuscript — the title that points back to the old song of the Quaker's wife who bakes a cake while the company dances. In Ireland it picked up the name "The Humours of Last Night," set in four parts in O'Farrell's Pocket Companion (c. 1806), which may underlie the setting heard at sessions today.