"She Moved Through the Fair" (also known as "She Moves Through the Fair", "Our Wedding Day", "Out of the Window", and "Keayrt Dooyrt My Ghraih Veen Rhym") is a traditional Irish folk song. Its lyrics were first published in Herbert Hughes' songbook "Irish Country Songs" in 1909, though its mysterious origins are believed to be much older than that.
The subject of the song begins with a young man watching his lover move away from him while at a fair, after telling him that since her family will approve, "it will not be long, love, till our wedding day". In the final verse, she returns to him nightly as a ghost, echoing the words "it will not be long, love, till our wedding day", suggesting her untimely end and a potential reunion in an afterlife.
In a letter published in The Irish Times in 1970, Longford poet, Padraic Colum, stated that he, along with Irish composer, Herbert Hughes, had first heard the tune in County Donegal, and that he'd later authored all but the final verse of the lyrics which were published in Hughes' songbook in 1909. However, another music composer, Proinsias Ó Conluain, then contacted the The Irish Times and stated that he'd recorded an identical song called "She Went Through the Fair" that was taught to him by an old man who had said "the song was a very old one" and that he'd "learned it as a young man from a basket-weaver in Glenavy".
The traditional singer, Paddy Tunney, later clarified that Padraic Colum had documented the song for publication after returning from a gathering in Donegal with Herbert Hughes and others. However, it would be more accurate to say that Colum simply added some additional lyrics to what was already a traditional song which by then had "already generated many variations throughout Ireland". Since then, several variations of the song have been discovered throughout Ireland and Scotland.
The song's melody is in Mixolydian mode, leading musicologist John Loesberg to speculate in Ossian’s "Folksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland - Volume I" (2005) that "from its strange, almost Eastern sounding melody, it appears to be an air of some antiquity". He doesn't define its age with any further precision, though suggests that the tune's true origins likely date as far back as Medieval times. [ Roud 861 ; Henry H141 ; Ballad Index K165 ; Mudcat 869 ; trad. adapted Padraic Colum / Herbert Hughes]
Music performed by Anne Briggs from the album "Edinburgh Folk Festival Vol. 1." (1963).
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