Annotation:New Town of Edinburgh (1)
X:1 T:New Town of Edinburgh [1] M:C L:1/8 R:Reel, Country Dance Tune B:Straight and Skillern – Two Hundred and Four Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1 (c. 1775, No. 115, p. 58) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:A E|A,EAc d/c/B/A/ GA|c/d/e c/d/e dB,B,C|A,EAc d/c/B/A/ GA| B/c/d B/c/d AA,A,:||:E|FEAE FEAE|C/D/E C/D/E B,BBE| FEAE FEAE|B,/C/D B,/C/D A,AA:||:d|c>deA GAFG| EADA B,BBd|c>deA fAeA|dcBA EAA:||:c|Aceg agfe| dcBA GBBd|Aaga eaca|Ba g/a/b aAA:|]
NEW TOWN OF EDINBURGH [1]. Scottish, Reel and Strathspey. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCD. The tune was printed in Robert Bremner’s A Collection of Scots Reels and Country Dances (1769), a rather smallish collection of 28 tunes. The melody also appears in Joshua Campbell's A Collection of New Reels & Highland Strathspeys where it is set as a strathspey, and also in Campbell's A Collection of the Newest & best Reels and Minuets, set as a reel. Both volumes were printed in Glasgow about the year 1788. Campbell's collections were predated by a few years by London publishers Thomas Straight and Thomas Skillern, who printed it in their Two Hundred and Four Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1 (c. 1775).
The New Town of Edinburgh is, according to Wikipedia [1], "often considered to be a masterpiece of city planning...It was built in stages between 1765 and around 1850, and retains much of the original neo-classical and Georgian period architecture." A design competition was held in January 1766 to find a suitably modern layout for the new suburb, and was won by 26 year old James Craig.
