During the winter of 2024/5 my wife and I noticed a robin making regular visits to the bird table outside the kitchen window. Over time this little bird became so keen on the food we brought out that it fed willingly, usually from our hands. Several times a day it waited patiently, keenly looking at the window, until one of us appeared to give it its regular meals. This was such a precious experience that I thought I should write something to celebrate the daily visits of this trusting and delicate little creature. It seemed that the English popular tune from the renaissance ‘My Robin is to the Greenwood gone’, set by various Elizabethan composers including Farnaby and Munday was an appropriate choice for a set of variations. I realised that there were many poignant moments in what I was writing, partly due to the falling seven-note scale figure in the second half of the melody which I integrated into many of the variations. There is a well-known legend that, when Christ was on the cross, a robin, then simply a plain brown colour, flew down and sang to comfort Him in his pain, resulting in blood staining the bird’s breast. Perhaps, albeit subconsciously, this did infuse the creative process since, as it turned out, I completed the piece on Good Friday in 2025. There are 9 variations with the theme coming at the end with an accompaniment in the guise of a renaissance lute.