The Bride is a Bonnie Thing
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"The Bride is a Bonnie Thing", also known as "The Bride's a Bonny Thing" or<br> "The Bride has a Bonny Thing" or "The Lads of this Town" is an Scottish and Shetland<br> march or jig in A mixolydian. It is played in AEae or standard fiddle tuning.<br> The parts are played AABB (Bremner, Brody, Cooke) or AAB (Gow).<br> It is a Scottish tune played on the Shetland Island of Unst as a march; it is a variation<br> of the tune of the same name printed in early Scottish collections. John Stickle played<br> the tune in the key of G; Tom Anderson in A (AEae).<br> It was the traditionally played to welcome the bride into the ben (best) room after<br> the wedding and thus has had some renewed currency in modern times as a wedding<br> processional among traditional enthusiasts.<br> The piece appears in James Oswald's collection, but Glen finds it first printed by<br> Robert Bremner in his 1757 Scots Reels. That volume was issued the same year that<br> London publishers Charles and Samuel Thompson printed the tune in their<br> Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1 (1757), under the somewhat<br> risqué title "The Bride has a Bonnie Thing".<br> This tune may be the ancestor of the Shetland tune "Da Bride's a Bonnie Ting".<br> James Oswald again printed the tune a few years later in his Caledonian Pocket<br> Companion (Book VIII, p. 21, London, 1760) with the same title the Thompson's<br> employed (which appears to have been the original one).<br> A Highland bagpipe version can be found in Glasgow piper, pipe teacher and pipe-maker<br> William Gunn's Caledonian Repository of Music (1848) as "The Lads of this Town".<br> It was printed in Anderson & Swing's Haand Me Doon da Fiddle (1979),<br> Bremner's Scots Reels (c. 1757),<br> Carlin's The Gow Collection (1986),<br> Cooke's The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles (1986),<br> Gow's Complete Repository, Part 3 (1806) (as "The Bride has a Bonny Thing"),<br> Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1 (1757).<br> It was recorded by Tom Anderson and Aly Bain on The Silver Bow (1993) and<br> The Boys of the Lough on The Boys of the Lough (1973).<br>
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