"Buttered Peas", also known as "Butter to peas", "Pwt ar y bys", "Caithness", "Highland Wedding", "Jack's be the Daddy On't", "Reel of Stumpie", "Stumpie/Stumpey" or "No Man's Jig" is an English or Welsh air, reel or country dance tune in cut time and D Major. The parts are played AABB.
The tune can be found in James Ralph's Fashionable Lady (1730) and subsequently appeared in English ballad operas of the early 1730's such as John Gay's Achilles (1733), The Fashionable Lady, or Harlequin's Opera (1730), The Female Parson (1730), The Boarding School (1732), The Decoy (1733) and The Whim (1734).
"Buttered Pease" appears in several tune books and fiddlers' manuscripts from the 18th century. It was published by Walsh in his Compleat Country Dancing Master (1731) and in a later (1754) edition of the same volume, by Johnson in Daniel Wright's Complete Collection of Celebrated Country Dances (1740), by Charles and Samuel Thompson in their Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 2 (1765) and by James Aird in vol. 1 of his Selections of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs (1782). The tune was entered into the large mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork cleric and uilleann piper Canon James Goodman under the title “Butter to peas”.
Derivations (of the second strain) are included in the southwestern Pennsylvania-collected versions of "Drunken Sailor", well known by fifers and played as a march.
Angus Mackay arranged the tune for the Highland pipes and called it "Highland Wedding".
It was printed in Aird's Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 1 (1782), Hall & Stafford's Charlton Memorial Tune Book (1956), Elias Howe's Musician’s Omnibus Nos. 6 & 7 (1880-1882), Offord's John of the Green: Ye Cheshire Way (1985) and Bonny Cumberland (2018), Peacock's Tunes (c. 1805), Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984), Scott's English Song Book (1926), Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 2 (1765), Walsh's Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth (1740) and Caledonian Country Dances (c. 1745) and Wilson's A Companion to the Ballroom (1816).
It was recorded by Hesperus on Early American Roots (1997), Bonnie Shaljean on Farewell to Lough Neaghe (as "Pwt ar y bys") (198?), Robin Huw Bowen on Harp Music of Wales and Bonnie Shaljean and Robin Huw Bowen on Traditional Dance Music of Britain & Ireland (2018, as "Pwt ar y bys")