To finish this Walter Scott/Galashiels issue, overleaf is the tune of which Walter Scott’s uncle Thomas said ‘Donald Maclean, piper at Galashiels, was a capital piper, and was the only one who could play on the pipe the old popular tune of "Sour Plums of Galashiels," it requiring a peculiar art of pinching the back hole of the chanter with the thumb, in order to produce the higher notes of the melody in question.”
In his History of Galashiels (1898) Robert Hall tells us: “According to Cromek, the piper referred to in the poem [The Maid of Gallowshiels - see p. 50] was the above Donald Maclean, who, in the beginning of last century [18th], acted as piper to Sir James Scott of Gala … The earliest allusion to the song, or air, “Sour Plums of Galashiels,” is found in an old version of “Gala Water,'' … and it appears from internal evidence to have been in existence in 1632, but how much earlier cannot be determined.”
The ‘evidence’ in question bids ’Adieu to Sour Plums o’ Gallowshiels” and contains a reference to ‘a’ the Pringles o’ Gala Water’; Hall points out that the last Pringle of Galashiels disponed his lands to his grandson James Scott in 1632.”
Be that as it may, this version of the tune is that printed by Matt Seattle in his Geordie Syme’s Paircel o Tunes and is included here with his permission (the same version also appears in Mr Seattle’s On Ruberslaw).