28: Robin and Gronny

A song about Robin and his Nan getting blind drunk, and Robin subsequently having to rescue his Nan from a ditch. Given to Frank Kidson in 1892-3 by Mr W.H. Lunt, one of his Liverpool informants, who learnt it from an old Lancashire woman (hence the Lancashire terms like 'hoo' for 'she'). It was published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society Vol. 2 No. 9 (1906). Elsewhere in what is now Merseyside, a different version (with similar words but a rather different tune) was collected in 1907 by Anne Gilchrist from a Mrs Sumner of Southport - I have used some of the words of that Southport version to complete the unfinished story in Kidson's version.

The tune and words appear to have a decent Lancashire pedigree; Kidson notes that the tune was used for a song by Charles Dibdin, Jr in 1801, and Wm Bruce Olson (in the Folk Music Journal Vol. 5 No. 2) has traced a variant of the words back to a manuscript from the 1690s.

Robin and Gronny is #1579 in the Roud Folksong Index.