I work every year at the Laura Ingalls Wilder festival in Pepin, WI, doing traditonal music. So to my mindset, this is a "Pa Ingalls" song. There is conjecture, I believe, that many of the songs may have been added to the series of books by Rose Wilder Lane, so the age of the songs in the "Little House" books is uncertain.

I think it's in "Little Town On the Prairie," that Pa sings, "Grimes's wife made skim milk cheese, old Grimes, he drank the whey. A north wind came up from the south, and blew old Grimes away." and other verses about Grimes and his wife.

There is a fiddle tune, "Old Grimes," and the tunes I have heard could be sort of an inversion or an improvisation off the melody of Auld Lang Syne, which Old Grimes can be sung to. I'd be interested to know more about this piece and how it relates to Old Grimes the tune.