Taffy was a Welshman...

[sff_corgi_lj]

I was telling sit_good_dog a bit about this, because she hadn't come across the whole 'Taffy' thing before. Considering the rhymes below, I'm hoping this indicates a strong move towards greater tolerance!

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 picked up the leg of beef
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 home;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a marrow bone.

I went to Taffy's house,
Taffy was not in;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a rolling-pin.

I went to Taffy's house;
Taffy was in bed;
I took up a poker
And flung it at his 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 upon 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 leg 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.

The site I found this particular transcription on says it's Traditionally sung on the 1st of March, St David's Day, on the Welsh borders and other parts of England.

Another site tries to put a pretty academic face on it: The children's nursery rhyme 'Taffy was a Welshman' has its origins in Celtic Mythology. Amaethon (from which the name Taffy is derived) was the God of Welsh Agriculture. This Celtic God Amaethon was renown for stealing a variety of wild life from the god Arawn, the Lord of the Otherworld. The association between Taffy and the thief is thus explained...

Hyeah. Try again.

The way it was told to me, it's actually - not unlike 'Ring Around a-Rosey' - a children's version of rather nasty history. With apologies to anyone who might think they need one, when the eventually-English moved far enough west, they started driving the rural and scattered Cymric tribes out of the smooth and easy lowlands, like along the Severn and Wye, into the hills. Cattle don't do terribly well on highlands for the most part, but sheep and goats do. So the Welsh herdsmen turned to the animals who would thrive in the Brecon Beacons, the Black Mountains, Gwynedd et alia, leaving the cattle to the Saesneg. They did not, however, lose their taste for beef -- so occasionally, they'd just go take it. 'Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef.' The Saesneg, being miffed by this, tried raiding back, but it was a lot harder to steal from a people born to guerilla fighting, with food which could skip nimbly about nearly vertical rock faces, well out of reach. They had to settle for destroying houses and such.

The 'Taffy' part is the slur form of the extremely popular Welsh given name, 'Dafydd', which itself is from 'David', a biblical name and also the name of Wales' patron saint. It's the equivalent of calling Irishmen 'Paddy' and Scotsmen 'Jock' (but what did you call the women? 'Oh, servant-girl'?). We got from 'Dafydd' (DAH-vith, with the 'th' like in 'leather') to 'Taffy' by means of the Welsh accent. When the English used it, it was coming from that 'I can't be bothered to learn to say your real name correctly' colonial-overlord-minded place. Alas, that attitude doesn't belong strictly to them; I think they just got the most press for it.

If you Google for 'Taffy' 'Welsh' and 'origin', most amusingly you'll find scads of annoying baby-name-book websites, all pink and powder blue, with their complete lack of documentation and authenticity [/heraldic sneer], telling you 'Taffy' means 'beloved'. Yeah, only if you know a little Hebrew and strip off a century-plus of prejudice.

I imagine, although I've seen no evidence of it myself, that nowadays it'd be used by Cymry to Cymry as a form of reclaiming and defiance.

[doubletake] However... maybe I'm wrong about the 'tolerance' thing.... :/

Dydd Dewi Sant (St. David's Day) is March 1 -- wear a daffodil for defiance. :)

Comments

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was wondering too! Thanks for this.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Here's a cute story I found when looking for 'Jock' for chrysantza:

March 25th 2003

SCOUSE

In a piece about cookery yesterday our regional television news magazine Granada Reports mentioned the dish 'Scouse', originally 'Lobscouse', a sailor's stew, which is famously popular in the Liverpool area. 'Scouse' is also of course the nickname given to people who hail from Liverpool, and I can rarely hear it spoken without being reminded of my time spent doing National service in the Army in the late fifties, a time I spent in the company of several 'Scousers'.

No private soldier in the Army is ever called by his Christian name. His superiors call him by his surname or number and his peers call him by a nickname. Thus Fred Clarke on entering the Army is immediately Nobby Clarke, his Fred dispensed with for the duration. Fred Clarke isn't aware of it at the time but he is lucky as there's a fairly good chance that he'll be the only Nobby. If he had hailed from a certain part of the country he would have had to share a nickname. For example all Scots are called Jock - the Scots in my platoon were Jock Mackay, Jock Lachie and Jock Dalkeith. All Welshmen are Taffy, Taffy Jones, Taffy this, Taffy that, Taffy the other. All Irishmen are called Paddy. All people from Birmingham are called Brummie and all people from Newcastle are called Geordie. Oddly enough, as far as I know, there isn't a nickname for people who come from Leeds, 'Leedser' or 'Leedsie' or something like that. We had a bloke from Leeds in our platoon whose name was Gary Spragg and everybody called him 'Twat', although because he undoubtedly was a twat we might very well have caused him that even if there had been a nickname for people hailing from Leeds. So in our platoon we had Jocks and Taffies and Paddies and Geordies, but mostly we had Scousers. We had Scouse Aldridge, Scouse Nicholson, Scouse Jenkinson, Scouse Murray and Scouse Little.

Then one day another lad from Liverpool was posted in. And he really was a Scouse. Dave Scouse. That was his name. And the thing was - nobody called him Scouse. Everybody called him Dave. And this really annoyed him because hailing from Liverpool and proud to be a scouser he wanted to be called Scouse just like all the other scousers. One night in the barracks room he demanded to know why it was that we didn't call him Scouse. I had no idea why really but as nobody else appeared to know either I offered the opinion that if we called him Scouse it might appear that we were calling him by his surname, like his superiors did, and this being the case it wouldn't be very matey of us. Brummie Weston then said that if we called him Scouse his name would be Scouse Scouse and that if he had to say Scouse Scouse it would sound like he was stuttering and he wasn't going to have anybody hearing him stuttering as it would make him sound daft. Geordie Galbraith said that as Brummie Weston was from Birmingham he sounded daft anyway and a fight broke out. Over the course of the next few weeks Dave Scouse pleaded with everyone to call him Scouse but nobody would. Then someone, not me, although I would have had I known the eventual outcome, suggested to Dave that if he was so desperate to be called Scouse why didn't he simply change his surname by deed poll, to say Hibbert, then, no longer Dave Scouse but Dave Hibbert, he would be known as Scouse Hibbert. Dave thought this was an excellent suggestion and put the wheels in motion immediately. It took six weeks to come through, Dave deciding on his mother's maiden name for his new surname, and the day he announced it will remain etched in my memory for all time. He gathered us all round him and said, pride tinged with a touch of defiance in his voice: "Right you lot, I'm not Dave Scouse any more, I'm Dave Smith!"

"Good old Smudger," said Jock Lachie.

[gwendolyngrace.livejournal.com]

Yup, just like the phrase "To Welsh on" (as in a bet) means to default on - it's another racial slur propagated by the English. (And to "gyp" or "gip" someone - to cheat them, in other words - is really a reference to Gypsies.)

Gotta love the British Empire.

And don't forget your leeks for St. Crispian's Day.

Shakespearan for Bite Me!

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

"if you can mock a leek you can eat a leek."
Henry V, Act V, scene i.

Re: Shakespearan for Bite Me!

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

A leek once bit my sister.

I made some leek-potato soup once (Welsh-Irish?) which my mother deemed very good. I seem to remember it was a Celtic-specialty issue of one of the cooking magazines that the recipe came from... but alas, I don't know where it is now.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

I'm finding all sorts of lovely long quotes relevant to this, although this would go just as well with soupytwist's and stormrunner's Jasper Fforde comments on my previous post:

Socialist Republic of Wales: Wales is a major source of humour and alternative history in the TN series. I gather that the nature and status of Wales, and English attitudes thereto, are not well known abroad, so I will attempt to explain. Wales is a country of approx. 3 million people, in our world part of the United Kingdom but very definitely NOT part of England; it's that sticky-out bit on the left hand side of Britain. About a third of the Welsh people still speak the Welsh language, a Celtic tongue not related or similar to English. The south of the country (where most of the Welsh live) was until recent years notable for coal mines, and this naturally bred a people with a marked Socialist bent. Labour party candidates in Welsh elections didn't bother counting their votes; they just weighed them. Wales has been politically and culturally subordinate to England for nigh on a thousand years, and there are those among the Welsh on whom this rankles. The English meanwhile, have very often adopted a patronising, condescending and even contemptuous attitude to the Welsh and their language (until the early 20th century use of Welsh was all but officially banned). Why the English (who by and large know very little of the Welsh) continue to condone and practice anti-Welsh prejudice, I do not know. They affect to find the language incomprehensible and unpronounceable, and are given to making unfunny remarks about sheep. (This is not a new phenomenon, either; Shakespeare is full of Welsh jokes - see Captain Fluellen in Henry V). Metropolitan trendies who would recoil in horror from a joke about black people see nothing wrong in making racist remarks about the Welsh (a well-known TV presenter did just that on national TV not long ago - she later apologised, but not very sincerely). It's as if the English don't believe the Welsh really exist, but are just a bunch of Englishmen with funny accents who insist on pretending to be foreign, just so as they can wind up the English. Apparently sane English people seriously believe that any conversation they hear in Welsh is about them and also that Welsh people only talk Welsh when there are English people to hear, and once all the tourists have gone home speak English to one another. Jasper's joke is that were Wales an independent republic in conflict with England, the English would treat them with a lot more respect than they actually do. Note, I am not Welsh, and speak only a few words of the language, but Jasper lives in Wales and has a Welsh partner. Anybody thinking of making anti-Welsh jokes on the Fforum might like to remember that. (The name of the Fforum is itself a sly Welsh in-joke - ff in Welsh is pronounced as English f in fire, but f is pronounced as a V). Incidentally, Jasper always refers to the country in which Thursday lives as England/English. What became of Scotland and Ireland in Nextian history? (I ask as one of Irish descent).

[snippage]

Jones the manuscript: surnames were imposed upon the Welsh by the English, having previously referred to themselves by patronymics such as Ap Rhys, 'son of Rhys'. As a result of the artificial and enforced choice, the Welsh stock of surnames was very limited, with Jones, Davies, Hughes and Williams especially prominent. To distinguish between the many Dai Jones in even quite small communities, nicknames were employed, based on residence or occupation. Thus, the milkman might be Jones the Milk. Hence the bookshop owner's byname.

Various responses

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

I'm all for peaceful acts of defiance. The LAPD got a snootful of being called "pigs" so they one day they all wore little pig lapel pins, redefining the term as an acronym for Pride, Integrity, Guts.

-=-=-=-

Welshmen may or may not object to being called Taffy but I'm pretty sure that they object to Daffy. SF writer Daffydd ab Hugh [ne David Friedman, an old classmate of mine] had Just No Sense Of Humor about it. Deshpickable!

-=-=-=-

I can't say as I really buy the idea that Taffy is an abbreviated form of Amaethon. BZZZZZT! Thanks for playing!

-=-=-=-

A nicer rhyme from the Mother Goose corpus:

Daffy-down-dilly is now come to town,

With a petticoat green, and a gay yellow gown,

And her little white blossoms are peeping around.

Re: Various responses

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

As opposed to David Friedman, Cariadoc?

(HAH! I suspected he was 'fake' Welsh!!) He's an SFFite, too!

Re: Various responses

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Same birth name, COMPLETELY different people. Trust me on this one.

Druid? Is that any job for a nice Jewish boy? Heh, I should talk.

Re: Various responses

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Heehee, I just KNEW Dafydd's name was too good to be true!

Re: Various responses

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth: I seem to recall that his da's first name actually is Hugh, so it's a translation of his Hebrew name [a similarly-structured patronymic] rather than a complete fabrication.

David was a year behind me in IHP, a gifted program for middle school mutants, later fictionalized as TV series "Head of the Class." They denied strenuously that any of the characters were based on real students, not even the youngest girl, shorter than the others, pigtails and Star Trek obsession... I chose not to sue. What would be the point? *sigh*

Re: Various responses

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

That's too funny. Because... consider Janice. Then, remember what I look like. Need I part my hair? :D

(The behaviour part is like soooo blatant.)

Re: Various responses

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

P.S. Nice triskele!

Re: Various responses

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Heh, I thought you would dig that.

Miss ya! and so does Tegan.

Re: Various responses

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

I'm considering inflicting myself on stormrunner in... April, I think it is, IF the deal goes through on the house she's offered on. So there's a chance I'll be down south for a week [waggles eyebrows].

[mafdet.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the history and naming lesson! Very interesting!

BTW, I had no idea that "Jock" was a derogatory term for Scotsman. I'm used to it being a slang term for "athlete," in fact I don't think it's even slang anymore.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Jock — (H) "the supplanter"; older Scottish form of James and Seumas. Jack, Seoc.

'Seoc' would be pronounced 'Shock', basically... and thence to 'Jock'.

It's not something that seems to've crossed the Pond extensively; maybe moreso in Canada than south of the long border, but all the New World British ended up with other things to deal with instead of intramural quibbling (not when there were all those native tribes and imported slaves to snarl at instead!). The Scots seemed to blend in better, but the Irish Potato Famine emigration settling in New England remained more distinct, allowing 'Paddy' into the American dialect where 'Jock' didn't hang around as much.

At least... that's my theory.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

I'd always sort of wondered about that one, myself.

Still think Taffy would be a good name for a future corgi. Beacause thievery + revenge are very corgish traits. :D

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Hee. A nice red&white one, so people not in the know would think you named him/her after the candy... and you could snicker behind your paw.

Whatever happened to that dog you were checking out? The maybe-boxerish?