Hi,

Mr Lattimer, Broadwood's informant in 1907 was Robert Lattimer, a well-known amateur singer. From Folk Music Journal - Volume 4, Issue 4 - Page 345, 1983: Other versions of [Robert] Anderson's songs he [Sidney Nicholson] had picked up from the singing of Robert Lattimer, the best known amateur singer in Carlisle during the middle of the late nineteenth century. Lattimer was the son of a builder and contractor and ended his days, like Brown, as director of a firm. He was old enough to have seen Anderson wandering the streets of Carlisle when he was a young boy. Of the five songs in the Broadwood collection communicated by this group, three came from Nicholson alone, one came via Nicholson from the singing of Brown, and one was sent in by the Lattimer family.

This is was added in the JFSS 1907: Sydney [Sidney] Nicholson has noted a number of tunes, is a great authority on Cumbrian dialect. He learnt most of his songs in boyhood from Mr. Robert Lattimer, of Carlisle, now dead. His songs here given are regularly sung by old Cumbrians. They used especially to be heard at the "Kern-suppers" which are now dying out. These took place after the last load of corn had been carried, lasted from 7 p.m. till 5 a.m., and were accompanied by much singing and dancing. The old words to the old tunes fell into disuse after Robert Anderson, the favourite Cumbrian poet, supplied the airs with verses of his own. Anderson wrote for Vauxhall Gardens, supplying James Hook, the composer, with words, in 1794 and later. Some of his songs were sung by Master Phelps in the Gardens. He issued a small volume of "Cumberland Ballads" in 1801, and a second edition a few years later.

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Since Robert Anderson (1770–1833), Cumbrian author, died in 1833, Lattimer must have been born around 1825. Apparently Miss M.B. Lattimer was Robert's sister [ref. Wakefield's Folk Song Competition]. Broadwood (see: https://www.vwml.org/search?q=RN10%20%20&is=1#) suggests it's "from her father's singing, he learnt it as a boy in Cumbria." It's also possible Robert's Father is also Robert-- a Robert Lattimer died in Cumbria in 1844 (who could be his father). The date of the ballad if Lattimer learned it at age 15 would be 1840. According to "folk song in cumbria" by S Allan, ?2017, Lattimer was born in 1825 the exact date I had guessed: "Robert Lattimer (1825-1901) and other members of his family seem to be key 'tradition bearers', in carrying forward into the twentieth century folk songs current in Carlisle in the nineteenth century."

Richie