I'm submitting the tune Oyster Girl for this week's tune. This D tune has a couple of things in common with Lyle's excellent tune of last week, Zinger (I promise learn it soon). First, they are both relatively obscure but excellent tunes that deserve to wider play. And second, they come from the same source, Nebraska fiddler Bob Walters. A transcription of Walters playing is included as tune 80 in The Old-Time Fiddler's Repertory, a collection of tunes compiled and edited by R. P. Christeson, published by the U of Missouri press in 1973, and reissued fairly recently.
I'm afraid there isn't much history to this tune. There is a fairly well-known English Jig by this name (in G I think), and the Fiddler's Companion wonders if Walters' version is related. But I can't really hear a similarity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcUv38wm2zE
Oyster Girl has not been recorded often. But, we do have two versions by Walters available.
The Slippery-Hill site has an excerpt with Walters playing backed up by piano. This is from an LP associated with the Old Time Fiddlers' Repertory, and published by the University of Missouri in 1976: https://www.slippery-hill.com/recording/oyster-girl
Charlie Walden and the Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association has put up a full CD of Bob Walters on Bandcamp, and this has a Walters playing while backed up by R.P. Christeson on his portable reed organ: https://missourifiddling.bandcamp.com/track/oyster-girl
Dwight Lamb has a version on his Joseph Won a Coated Fiddle album, and you can hear a bit at Amazon.
Charlie Walden and Pat Plunkett have re-released their cassette Hoe-downs, Hornpipes & Hokum on bandcamp. It's a great medley of Lady of the Lake and Oyster Girl, mixing fresh and salt water themes: https://charliewaldenmusic.bandcamp.com/track/lady-of-the-lake-oyster-girl
It seems to me that there was another recording out there, but I can't find it now.
And finally, I learned the tune from Billy Mathews' version on Volume 1 of his 500 fiddle tunes project. I've picked up a bunch of great tunes from Billy over the years, and you can learn more about his big tune project at http://www.banjobilly.net
I worked out a banjo version of Oyster Girl in February of 2012, and posted it in the Sound Off then. Since then I've managed to teach it to a few people around here, and I've always had it in mind for a TOTW. It's just a happly bouncy tune, and is particularly fun on the banjo.
I'm attaching an excerpt of Billy Mathews' version. A video and audio that I recorded today, as well as another video playing a bit slower (that was hard).