Annotation:Flowers of St. Petersburg (The)
Tune properties and standard notation
FLOWERS OF ST. PETERSBURG, THE. AKA and see "Boston Reel (The)." American, Reel. F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune was perhaps renamed for the 1871 visit of the young Grand Duke Alexander Alekseyevich, the future Czar Alexander III, who came to the United States as an officer with a Russian naval squadron, the first official visit of a Romanov to the United States. St. Petersburg was then the capital of Russia (the flowers meaning, of course, the city's comely young women).
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 28. Ryan's Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 53.
Recorded sources: