"Taffy was a Welshman" is an

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. Fr ...

which was popular between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It has a

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadsid ...

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 Cardiff (; ) is the capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of in and forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area officially known as the City and County of Ca ...

is built, and seems to have been in use by the mid-eighteenth century.M. Stephens, ''The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales'' (Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 569. The rhyme may be related to one published in ''

Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book ''Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book'' is the oldest extant anthology of English nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744. It contains the oldest printed texts of many well-known and popular rhymes, as well as several that eventually dropped out o ...

'', 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 James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (born James Orchard Halliwell; 21 June 1820 – 3 January 1889) was an English writer, Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and a collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Life The son of Thomas Hal ...

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 Saint David's Day ( or ), or the Feast of Saint David, is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March, the date of Saint David's death in 589 AD. Traditional festivities include wearing daffodils and leeks, ...

(1 March) complete with leek-wearing effigies of Welshmen.

Notes

{{Ethnic slurs English folk songs English children's songs Traditional children's songs Songs about fictional male characters Songs about crime Cultural depictions of Welsh people British regional nicknames 1780 songs English nursery rhymes Year of song unknown Songs with unknown songwriters 1780s quotations Quotations from music