Grandfather Bryan

DESCRIPTION: Grandfather Bryan dies on St Patrick's day. The singer lists the worthless items he inherits: cloth-leather britches, broomstick with the head of a rake, blanket of cloth patches, a key with no lock .... "I'm fixed in grand style for the winter."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1873 (Colleen Bawn Songster)
KEYWORDS: death humorous nonballad lastwill
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, p. 121, "Grandfather Brian" (1 text)
Peacock, pp. 55-56, "Grandfather Bryan" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Roger deV. Renwick, _Recentering Anglo/American Folksong: Sea Crabs and Wicked Youths_, University Press of Mississippi, 2001, pp. 83-84, "Grandfather Bryan" (1 text)
Colleen Bawn Songster, Robert M. DeWill, 1873 (available in the Robert Winslow Gordon songster collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress online), pp. 20-21, "Grandfather Brianr" (1 text)
Roud #17696
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, 2806 c.15(113), "My Grandfather Brian", unknown, n.d.; also Harding B 19(41), "My Grandfather Brian"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Maurice Crotty" (tune)
cf. "My Father Died a Month Ago" (theme) and references there
NOTES [78 words]: The first verse of O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland has lines close to first verse lines of Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 155, "My father died a month ago" (" ... died ... And left me all his riches ... And a pair of leather breeches"); the themes are identical (earliest date in Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes is 1894). - BS
A similar item occurs in Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 172, "(My father died a month ago)." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: Pea055

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