MORNING SERIAL
IN 1912, a supposedly humorous book entitled Taffy Was a Welshman declared that Wales, like Ireland and to a lesser extent Scotland, was pretending to be a country: “Cut off and aloof from England, countries whose noble and superior inhabitants have been basely enslaved by English trickery, and brought to the very depths by English plunder and injustice. Consequently they cry out for ever of their wrongs and woes; they boast for ever of their un-Englishness, and babble for ever of their separateness and independence, and of the importance of their petty languages and extraordinary ‘national aspirations.’ During the past half-century this vicious and ridiculous spirit has developed to an extent which the Saxon does not altogether appreciate. In Wales especially it is raging and rampant.”
More common than seeing the Welsh as a political threat was a tendency to sneer or just laugh at them.
The nursery rhyme that began by declaring that “Taffy was a thief” and ended with the narrator breaking “Taffy’s head” was very well known and appeared in a whole host of children’s books, even as late as the early 2000s.
Whatever its intentions, it cannot have helped the image or self-esteem of the Welsh. Nor did the widespread use of “to welsh” or to “welch” to describe breaking a deal or bet. Well into 20th century, and even beyond, the Welsh were the subject of musical hall and postcard humour that mocked their language, backwardness and country ways.
This may have been typical of wider humour that jested at anyone and anything different, but again it was hardly indicative of a union built on equality.
It also had the effect of creating amongst some a sense of embarrassment about being Welsh. Wales could still inspire intense emotional feelings but it could also seem to be rather old-fashioned, something to be played down, especially when confronted by the snobberies of the British class system and its distrust of outsiders.
> Wales: England’s Colony? by Martin Johnes is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES MONDAY