Taffy was a Welshman

"Taffy was a Welshman" is an anti-Welsh 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:

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:
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:
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:
In the 1840s James Orchard Halliwell collected a two verse version that followed this with:
This version seems to have been particularly popular in the English counties that bordered Wales, where it was sung on Saint David's Day complete with leek-wearing effigies of Welshmen.