Unst Bridal March
Notation:
Standard Notation
ABC Notation
Mandolin Tablature
Violin Tablature
traditional
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Standard Notation
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Shetland
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Unst Bridal March", also known as "Bridal March from Unst" or "Unst Wedding March" is a<br> march drom Shetland in G March or A Major. The parts are played AAB.<br> This is the tune with which the fiddler led the wedding couple from the church to the bride's<br> house for the party, accompanied in the lead by a ‘gunman’ who shot a rifle at intervals to<br> frighten evil spirits and insure luck to the gathering. Pat Shuldham-Shaw remarks: "This<br> tune was used to accompany the procession from the Kirk after the marriage service. From<br> almost every house passed on the way there would come a fiddler onto the doorstep who would<br> play this tune as the procession passed". Wedding marches were a common Scandinavian<br> practice, imported to the Shetlands during the Scandinavian colonization period, and<br> Christine Martin (2002) says the march is sometimes still played in Norway. Pat<br> Shuldham-Shaw points out this tune, however, "is really a slowed down version of<br> 'A Rock and a Wee Pickle Tow', a well-known Scottish dance and song tune".<br> One of the earlier transcriptions is of the playing of John Stickle, Baltasound, Unst,<br> July, 1946 by Pat Shuldham-Shaw. <br> It was printed in Anderson's Haand Me Doon da Fiddle (1979), Brody's Fiddler’s Fakebook (1983),<br> Martin's Traditional Scottish Fiddling (2002), Shuldham-Shaw's 'Folk Music and Dance in<br> Shetland', Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (1947). <br> It was recorded by John McCutcheon on Barefoot Boy with Boots On (1981)(Learned from<br> fiddler Aly Bain), Rodney Miller & David Surette on New Leaf (2000), Anderson and Bain on<br> The Silver Bow, The Boys of the Lough on Boys of the Lough (1973) and Aly Bain and<br> Ale Möller on Fully Rigged.<br>
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