"Over the Water to Charlie", also known as "Charley Over the Water", "Over the River to Charlie", "Over the Water", "Ligrum Cush", "Lacrum Cosh", "The Marquis/Marquess of Granby", "Pot Stick", "Sean Buidhe/Bui", "The Shambuy/Shambuie" and "Wishaw's Delight" is a Scottish (originally) and English air, jig and morris dance tune in 6/8 time and in A Major (Raven), G Major (Alewine, Kennedy, Kerr, Mallinson) or D Major (Aird, Bremner, Gibbons). The parts are played AABBCCDD.
Although the title stems from the Jacobite era, the tune is older and has had many names. Kate Van Winkler Keller (1992) identifies “Charlie” as having been based on a 1740’s dance tune called “Potstick.” However, by the 1750's it appears in published collections with the "Over the Water" title. Samuel Bayard (1981) maintains that at some point the tune was altered and a new group of variations formed using the second half of the "Charlie" tune as the first strain and adding a different second strain. This second group is usually known as "Blow the Wind Southerly" (after song lyrics) or "Kinloch (of Kinloch)" {a title which first appeared in 1798 in John Watlen's Second Collection of Circus Tunes}.
Early printings of the tune can be found in Oswald’s Caledonian Pocket Companion book 4 (1752), the Gillespie Manuscript of Perth (1768), Jonathan Fentum’s Compleat Tutor for the German Flute (London, 1766), and Robert Bremner's 1757 collection (pg. 16). The dance tune is related to the song melody by the same name.
It was printed in Aird's Selection of Scotch, English, Irish, and Foreign Airs, vol. II (1782), Alewine's Maid that Cut Off the Chicken’s Lips (1987), Bacon's The Morris Ring (1974), Bayard's Dance to the Fiddle (1981), Bremner's A Collection of Scots Reels (1757), Gow's Third Collection of Niel Gow’s Reels (1792) (3rd ed., appears as “Original Set of O’er the Water to Charlie”), Hall & Stafford's Charlton Memorial Tune Book (1974), Keller's Fiddle Tunes from the American Revolution (1992), Kennedy's Fiddlers Tune Book, vol. 2 (1954), Kerr's Merry Melodies, vol. 1, Mallinson's Mally’s Cotswold Morris Book (1988), Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984), Sumner's Lincolnshire Collections, vol. 1.