Annotation:Colonel E. Wildman's Quick Step

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COLONEL E. WILDMAN'S QUICK STEP. Scottish, March (6/8 time). B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Wildman was an officer in the 6th Regiment of Dragoon Guards (or Carabineers), and the brother of the dashing hussar Colonel Thomas Wildman [1] (1787–1859), who bought and restored Byron's home of Newstead Abbey. The family had become wealthy as the owners of Quebec Estate, a sugar plantation in Jamaica, West Indies. Wildman entered the army as an Ensign in 1808 and served in the Peninsula War with the 4th Dragoons from 1809-1811, and again from 1812 to the end of the war in 1814, including the battles of Talavera and Busaco, action at Redinha, battle of Albuhera, retreat from Salamanca to Portugal, battles of Vittoria, Pyrennees, Tarbes, and Toulonse. At Albuhera [2] (Albuera) he received two severe sabre wounds in the head and arm, and was made prisoner. After Napoleons return from exile, Wildman served in the campaign of 1815 to once again displace the French Emperor, and had three horses killed under him at Waterloo. He was promoted to Lieut.-Col. in September, 1823, placed on half-pay in 1839 and died in 1846.

This mention of him is from a medical treatise called On the Diseases and Injuries of Arteries (George James Guthrie, 1830, p. 262):

Lieutenant Colonel Wildman, now of the Carabineers, was wounded at the battle of Albuhera, by a sabre cut directly across the middle of the deltoid muscle, so as to divide it completely down to the bone of the arm. He was taken prisoner at the same moment, and the French surgeons dressed his wound by filling it with charpie, and then bound the arm down to the side. He made his escape in the night, and was brought to me on the second day after the accident. The first thing I did was to remove the dressings, raise the arm to a right angle with the body, by which alteration the edges of the wound might be brought into contact, and then try by a continuation of the position, and by compress and bandage, to keep the parts together, so that as little deficiency of substance might appear as possible. The wound did not unite under this treatment by the first intention, but it readily did so by granulation, and his recovery is so complete, that at this moment he is unconscious of any defect in strength or motion whatsoever.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Duncan McKercher (A Collection of Original Stathspeys and Reels), Edinburgh, c. 1830; p. 17.

Recorded sources:

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