The RSCDS revised edition of Book 15 claims the source is “Dances for 1813, published by Button and Whitaker, 1813.”
However in
issue 3913
Meryl Thomson writes that the source is actually “Le Sylphe 1815”.
Lord Rosslyn's Fancy
Lord Rosslyn was a Scot turned English politician.
Alexander Wedderburn was born in 1733, the son of Peter Wedderburn,
who when made a Lord of Session styled himself Lord Chesterhall.
Wedderburn attended Edinburgh University and studied at the Inner Temple.
To please his father, Wedderburn returned to Scotland for a short time and qualified for the bar
but in 1757 he went to London and the Inner Temple.
Through the influence of his friends,
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713–1792) and William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705–1793),
he put his feet on the first rungs of the political ladder.
First Solicitor-General, then Attorney-General,
he became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1780 as Lord Loughborough
and in 1793 he was made Lord Chancellor, in which post he remained until 1801.
Politically unstable, Wedderburn swung from Tory to Whig and back to Tory
during the course of his career.
In 1801 he was created first Earl of Rosslyn and he retired from public life.
He died at his English estate in 1805 and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Since it was a well-known fact that Lord Rosslyn was, though a brilliant orator, an exceedingly dull man,
it is surprising thgat a dance was devised in his honour,
but perhaps there was pride taken in his accomplishments, particularly when viewed from a distance.
From “Scotland Dances”, by Eugenia (Jeannie) Callander Sharp
(Used by permission.)