Sweetest When She’s Naked waltz

Stumbled upon this tune in an old thread and found it never made it to the tunes section.

There’s something wrong with the barlines and beaming in the sheet music isn’t there?

Laura Risk teaches this in 3/4 time as a minuet.

…is a setting from a book, James Oswald’s Curious Collection (1740). The tune is really in 3/4 and is an air.

Ten years after Oswald, a tune called Sweetest when Naked appeared in Johnson’s Choice Collection of Favourite Country Dance tunes. But it’s in 2/4 and A major. Not had a chance to compare them yet but, despite the differences of time and key, I think there might be some family resemblances. If so, I’ll try to post it later.
I thought about including the Johnson tune in a workshop earlier this year but was concerned the title might offend some people. A friend suggested I could change just one letter and call it “Sweetest When Baked”!

No, definitely a different tune.

One can always wonder who ‘she’ is. It appeared on a program and a very prim family declined to attend/play because they felt if too liscentious.
Perhaps ‘she’ is a little baby fresh from her bath.
Sylvia Miskoe, Concord NH USA

The title refers to whisky rather than a woman. Whisky without water or ice is referred to as “naked” or “neat.” So there is nothing licentious about this.

Well, if it’s about the devil likker, that’s not okay either. Seems like this pretty little tune just can’t win. ;)

> The title refers to whisky rather than a woman.

Pretty sure the original composer’s intent is lost to us, though it’s a plausible theory.

I found it listed in the Petrucci Music Library (also in the Dundee Library Archives) as the last tune in the Index, Item 62, of “A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes, Book 2” (work title), James Oswald, published c. 1943.
https://imslp.org/wiki/Collection_of_Curious_Scots_Tunes,_Book_2_(Oswald,_James)