Dance The Infare 3091

(or “Will Ye Go And Marry Ketty”)

Weddings in rural Scotland were occasions for merriment. After the ceremony the couple went straight from the church to the bride’s new abode. When they reached the dore of the house, a toast was drunk to their health and happiness and an “infare cake” was broken over the head of the bride and the fragments gathered up to be placed under the pillows of the young unmarried girls and men, in the hope that a dream would show them their future spouse. This ceremony was the “Infare” and the cake, naturally, was not one of today’s iced cakes or fruit cakes, but, rather, a variety of buttery oatcake, one which would have crumbled on impact.

Welcome to your ain fireside!
Health and wealth attend the bride!
Wanters no your true weird make:
Joes are spaed by th’ infare cake.

The song “Will You Go and Marry, Katie?” was furnished by Burns for James Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum, Volume 5. The tune was an old reel, from Robert Bremner’s A Collection of Scots Reels or Country Dances, dated by Stenhouse as 1764. Stenhouse adds, “At the foot of his manuscript, Burns, in a note to Johnson, says, ‘You will find this tune in Niel Gow’s, and several other collections’. Burns was alluding to Gow’s Second collection of Strathspeys, Reels, etc. in which the tune appears under the title of “Marry Ketty”.

Will ye go and marry Katie,
   Can ye think to tak a man.
It’s a pity ane sae pretty
   Should na do the thing they can.
You, a charming lovely creature,
   Wharefore wad ye lie y’er lane!
Beauty’s of a fading nature,
   Has a season, and is gane.

Therefore while ye’re blooming Katie,
   Listen to a loving swain;
Tak a mark by auntie Betty,
   Ance the darling o’ the men:
She wi’ coy and fickle nature,
   Trifled aff till she’s grown auld,
Now she’s left by ilka creature:
   Let na this o’ thee be tauld.

But, my dear and lovely Katie,
   This ae thing I hae to tell,
I could wish nae man to get ye,
   Save it were my very sel.
Tak me, Katie, at my offer,
   Or be-had, and I’ll tak you:
We’s mak nae din about your tocher,
   Marry, Katie, then we’ll woo.

Mony words are needless, Katie,
   Ye’re a wanter, sae am I;
If ye wad a man should get ye,
   Then I can that want supply:
Say then, Katie, say ye’ll tak me,
   As the very wale o’ men,
Never after to forsake me,
   And the priest shall say, Amen.

Then, O! then, my charming Katie,
   When we’re married what comes then,
Then nae ither man can get ye,
   But ye’ll be my very ain:
Then we’ll kiss and clap at pleasure,
   Nor wi’ envy troubled be;
If ance I had my lovely treasure
   Let the rest admire and die.