When Burns revised the song for SMM (version B) he adjusted the metre to suit a different--and I think more appropriate--air, The Caledonian Hunt's Delight. This tune, first published in Gow's Strathspey Reels, 1788, is in SMM, 1792, no. 374*, and Aird, 1794, iv, no. 134. Writing to Thomson in November 1794, Burns noted the 'pathos' of his song, and gave this account of the tune: 'A good many yeras ago a M^r Ja^s Miller, Writer in [Edinburgh]...expressed an ardent ambition to be able to compose a Scots air.--M^r Clarke, partly by way of joke, told him, to keep to the black keys of the harpsichord, and preserve some kind of rhythm; and he would infalliably compose a Scots air.--Certain it is, that in a few days, M^r Miller produced the rudiments of an air, which M^r Clarke, with some touches and corrections, fashioned into the tune in question.' But Burns had also heard the air identified as Irish (which Aird marks it) and Manx (Letter 646).