The Marching Quadrille
& Nolan the Soldier

“The Marching Quadrille” comes from Bob Walters of Decatur, Neb., as recorded by R.P. Christeson and published in his Old Time FiddlerŽs Repertory. According to Christeson, the Walters family believed the tune was used during the Civil War , and he suggests it is derived from the Scottish tune, “The MuckinŽ oŽ GeordieŽs Byre.”

The second tune is from Francis OŽNeill, the Chicago police superintendent who published the famous collection Music of Ireland in 1903. OŽNeill taught school for a time in Edina, Mo., regularly attended dances there and tried to learn the tunes played by local fiddlers. “Nolan the Soldier” is a quickstep which O'Neill named for a man who had been a fifer in the Confederate army and who often played (whether a fife or a fiddle is not made clear) on the square in Edina, accompanied on the drum by his son. O'Neill does not report when or where Nolan learned the tune. We learned the tune from Dennis Pash of the Kansas-based Etcetera String Band.