Notes to "Round Town Gals" performed by Henry Reed (fiddle) at Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection (Library of Congress) say:

"Accounts of the history of American popular song often cite the composer of the song and tune as a minstrel performer, Cool White, whose song "Lubly Fan" was published in 1843. But a set in Knauff's Virginia Reels (1839), vol. 4, #8, bearing the title "Midnight Serenade: Varied," suggests that it was already in circulation, with similar verses, before it found its way onto the minstrel stage. Indeed, it may be international in origin, for similar tunes have turned up in central Europe (see Bayard, Hill Country Tunes, #1a and 1b)."

From The Fiddler's Companion: Buffalo Gals:

"In America it is one of the most frequently mentioned fiddle tunes of the entire repertory. It appears listed in the early 20th century repertories of such geographically disparate Arizona fiddler Kenner C. Kartchner and Union County, Pa., fiddler Harry Daddario. Musicologist/Folklorist Vance Randolph recorded the tune from Ozark Mountain fiddler for the Library of Congress in the early 1940's. Cauthen (1990) says the tune had folk origins but was published in 1848 as a minstrel tune. "It was already well known in the gulf town of Mobile, Alabama, in 1846, where a woman who had once been "a flower, innocent and beautiful but long since turned from its stem, trampled, soiled and desecrated" was arrested for drunkenly singing 'Mobile gals, won't you come out tonight' on the streets" (pgs. 13-14). Bronner (1987) says that although the tune had a long traditional history its popularity in America stems from its use in the 19th century popular theater. In the 1840's one Cool White (real name: John Hodges), a blackface performer, sang a tune called "Lubly Fan, Won't You Come Out Tonight" with the popular minstrel troupe the Virginia Serenaders. He claimed to have composed it, and credit is often given to him, but it was first printed on sheet music in New York in 1848 with "author unknown." Alan Jabbour found a tune called "Midnight Serenade" in George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels, volume IV, printed in Baltimore in 1839, that is a set of "Buffalo Gals," and since it preceeds the minstrel era or at least publication of "Lubly Fan," he suggests the tune was at the time in oral tradition at least in the Upland South.
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"Overseas the song can be found in English songsters of the 19th and early 20th centuries; in Scott (1926) it appears as sung by the Ethiopian Serenaders. The tune briefly entered the British top 20 (rising as high as #9) at the end of 1982 when Malcom McLaren, promoter of the punk bands Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow, recorded a version consisting of himself vocalizing dance calls to a music track by East Tennessee's Roan Mountain Hilltollers (led by septugenarian fiddler Joe Birchfield) and assorted synthsized sounds, scratching and other arranged noise. Bayard (1944) reports that a German version may be seen in Burchenal's volume Folk-Dances of Germany (p. 21), while three Jugoslav sets he finds strongly resemble his American (Pennsylvania-collected) versions, which serves for his to heighten the suggestion that the tune originally came from Germany (these latter are located in Fr. S. Kuhac, Juznoslovjenske Narodne Popievke (Zagreb), II, (1879), pp. 222-224, Nos. 686-688, to a song entitled "Liepa Mara"). That the melody has also spread into France is evinced by its presence in J. Tiersot, Chansons Populaires Recueillies dans les Alpes Francaises, p. 532. tune 1, a 'Monferine.' Cf. also J.B. Bouillet, Album Aunergnat, p. 25, first part of the 'Bourree d'Issoire'". In East Lothian, Scotland, "Buffalo Gals" was the tune invariably played for the country dance called The Lads of Glasgow, which was performed at regional kirns until the 1930's and in some isolated areas until World War II (Flett & Flett, 1964). The melody was better known in East Lothian as tune for the bothy ballad "Whar'll bonnie Annie lie."

~Masato