The Flowers of Edinburgh

The first printing is in John Walsh's Caledonian Country Dances, published in London around 1737, with the singular title "Flower of Edinburgh." James Oswald printed it a few years later as a song, "My Love's Bonny When She Smiles on Me," and Nathaniel Gow credited the melody to Oswald.

The title has collected plenty of explanations. Gow wrote in 1817 that the "flowers" were the town's magistrates. A ruder story says they were the waste people threw from their windows into the streets of old Edinburgh. The tune spread to Ireland, England's morris sides, Cape Breton and New England, and it is still the music for a Scottish country dance of the same name.