Now You Are Married I Wish You Joy

DESCRIPTION: "Now you are married I wish you joy." You will have a girl and a boy. In seven years a son and daughter.
AUTHOR: Nicholls and Clendon, rewritten by Harry Wincott and Harry Leighton (source: Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame)
EARLIEST DATE: c.1884 (Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame)
KEYWORDS: marriage nonballad children husband wife
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame, pp. 149-150, "Now You Are Married I Wish You Joy" (2 fragments)
ADDITIONAL: Hugh Norris and Charles Herbert Mayo, editors, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset (Sherbourne, 1890 ("Digitized by Google")), Vol. I, pp. 133, 135, "[Query ]194. Children's Games," ("On the carpet you shall kneel") (2 texts)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Widow from Babylon" (one verse: Now you are married I wish you well")
NOTES [115 words]: The Norris and Mayo text describes a round ring dance. Once past the introductory couplets it includes the verse from Nicholls and Clendon: "Now you are married I wish you joy, First a girl and then a boy; Seven years after, son and daughter; Pray young couple, kiss together." If the description is accurate the text should significantly predate 1884: writing in 1890, "two or three years ago I wrote to a Dorsetshire woman, who was a nursery maid in our family when I was a child, asking her to write down all she remembered of the round game rhymes she used to teach us as children ...." The editor adds a local variation of the third line: "Seven years after, a poor man's daughter." - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: OpGap149

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