"Bostony" is an American reel in 2/4 time and G Major. The parts are played AA’BB’. "Bostony" was a tune in the repertoire of blind northeast Kentucky/W.Va. fiddler Ed Haley, as remembered by people around Portsmouth, Ohio, where the Northern and Southern fiddle traditions tended to mix (Mark Willson & Guthrie Meade, 1976). Fiddler Morris Allen (of South Shore, Kentucky) also remembered it as a part of Haley's repertoire. Mark Wilson also believes the title to be a corruption of Bostonia, the name of a magnificent steamboat that plied the Ohio River ports of Cincinnati, Portsmouth, Maysville, Big Sandy and Huntington in the 1870's, usually with a tiny orchestra aboard. John Hartford (1996) notes that there were not one, but six steamboats at various times on the Ohio by the name of 'Bostonia'. It was printed in Stephen F. Davis' The Devil's Box, vol. 31, No. 2, Summer 1997. It was recorded by Roger Cooper on Going Back to Old Kentucky (1996), John Hartford on Wild Hog in the Red Brush and a Bunch of Others You Might Not Have Heard (1996) and Roger Cooper (et al) on The Art of Traditional Fiddle (2001).