"Taffy was a Welshman" is an English language nursery rhyme which was popular between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19237.[1]
| "Taffy was a Welshman" | |
|---|---|
| Nursery rhyme | |
| Published | c. 1780 |
| Songwriter(s) | Unknown |
Lyrics
editVersions of this rhyme vary. Some common versions are:
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed;
I took the leg of meat and hit him on the head.
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't in;
I jumped on his Sunday hat and poked it with a pin.
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a sham;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of lamb;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was away,
I stuffed his socks with sawdust and filled his shoes with clay.
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a cheat,
Taffy came to my house, and stole a piece of meat;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not there,
I hung his coat and trousers to roast before a fire.[2]
Origins and history
editThe term "Taffy" may be a merging of the common Welsh name "Dafydd" (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈdavɨð]) and the Welsh river "Taff" on which Cardiff is built, and seems to have been in use by the mid-eighteenth century.[3] The rhyme may be related to one published in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, printed in London around 1744, which had the lyrics:
Taffy was born
On a Moon Shiny Night,
His head in the Pipkin,
His Heels upright.[2]
The earliest record we have of the better known rhyme is from Nancy Cock's Pretty Song Book, printed in London about 1780, which had one verse:
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't home;
Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow-bone.[2]
Similar versions were printed in collections in the late eighteenth century, however, in Songs for the Nursery printed in 1805, the level of violence in the poem increased:
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed,
I took the marrow bone and beat about his head.[2]
In the 1840s James Orchard Halliwell collected a two verse version that followed this with:
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not in;
Taffy came to my house and stole a silver pin.
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed;
I took up a poker and threw it at his head.[4]
This version seems to have been particularly popular in the English counties that bordered Wales, where it was sung on Saint David's Day (1 March) complete with leek-wearing effigies of Welshmen.[2]
Notes
edit- ^ "Roud Folksong Index S377993 Taffy was a Welshman". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. English Folk Dance and Song Society. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- ^ a b c d e I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 400–1.
- ^ M. Stephens, The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 569.
- ^ J. O. Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England (London, 1846), p. 19.