Songs I Learned from my Grandad

Abstract

Songs are an oral tradition on their own learned from parents and other relatives, in the playground, popular at the time whatever time that happened to be. It's good to see how much collating has been done in the past few years on this topic, and how much social change is demonstrated thereby. Only since meeting other historians through the Workshop and similar societies have I realised the relevance of the songs I learned from my grandad. He and my aunt, who reared me, were music hall and gramophone record devotees, much also given to story-telling and imaginative phraseology. They controlled my delinquencies by such things as 'My mother said that I never should play with the gypsies in the wood; if I do she will say Naughty girl to disobey.' And forthright Methodist superstition no, you can't knit on Sundays. It's bad luck. When Melanie Tebbutt was researching for her book on pawnbroking* she recorded my rendering of