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The Braes of Auchtertyre was first published in Stewart's Collection of the Newest and Best Reels and Country Dances (c. 1761) and later transposed to the key of A and played as a strathspey. The melody is sometimes credited to James Crocket, but this is far from settled. The tune has travelled in its lifetime; it's played in the Old Time and Bluegrass circles in the US as Billy In the Lowground, and it also made it across to Ireland, where it is played as The Belles of Tipperary or Beaus of Albany.

It's likely that the tune developed from an old slow Lowland Scots song tune called O Dear Mother (Minnie) What Shall I Do? That tune is also supposed to have evolved into the family of tunes which include the Scottish jig Blue Bonnets Over the Border (which also found its way to Ireland as Scotsman Over the Border).

[MIDI file].
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