Nursery rhyme
"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.
Lyrics.
Versions of this rhyme vary. Some common versions are:
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Origins and history.
The term "Taffy" may be a merging of the common Welsh name "Dafydd" () and the Welsh river "Taff" on which Cardiff is built, and seems to have been in use by the mid-eighteenth century. The rhyme may be related to one published in "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book", printed in London around 1744, which had the lyrics:
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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:
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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:
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In the 1840s James Orchard Halliwell collected a two verse version that followed this with:
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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.
Notes.
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