Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a sham;

Taffy came to my house and stole a piece 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.

______________

I first learnt this nursery rhyme back in the blissful days of High Babies but when I quoted it to someone at the weekend they were shocked.  Apparently the name ‘Taffy’ (corruption of the Welsh first name ‘Daffyd’) is to Wales what ‘Mick ‘and ‘Paddy’ are to Ireland.   Obviously no one told Richard Scarry about the dangers of ethnic stereotyping.

I subsequently did a little bit of research into the origins of the rhyme.   Tensions over cattle and sheep in border counties seem to have run high and this might be where the reference to stealing mutton and beef comes from.  

However, according to this thread, there’s also an old Flemish satirical verse which goes as follows:-

Tay je was er wee helsch maen

Taff je was er drief

Taff je gee am t’oom hye

Hwys een stole er leeck af beefe

This piece of doggerel, written about a corrupt priest, and brought over to border counties in the Middle Ages by Flemish settlers/mercenaries, was the origin of the Taffy rhyme.  At least that’s what the Welsh like to say.  It does sound rather similar – just a shame there isn’t anything else documenting this theory online apart from that one comment.

If in fact Taffy had nothing to do with the Welsh, they must be particularly unfortunate because their honesty is further impugned by the phrase ‘to welsh on a bet’, an ethnic slur for which we Irish, apparently, were responsible.  Immigrating Welshmen (yes, we had immigration, once) kept to themselves and couldn’t be trusted, hence the origin of the verb ‘to welsh’ (also sp. ‘welch’).

Unreliability may be a Welsh trait but they can use words to pull at the heartstrings even more effectively than the Irish.  We may surpass at hyperbole, but they know the power of restraint; we’ve a million and one words to refer to England, mostly unflattering, they’ve only one – ‘Lloegr’ or ‘the lost lands’ – which says it all, really.   Nice to see that, rather than calling for Taffy to be banned (so predictable), they’ve gone one better and simply written a response which knocks it out of the park – you can read it here.

Peggy Cummins, by photographer Bob Landry, Hollywood, 1940s

The UK may brag about Helen Mirren, born 1945 and still looking like she’s a bit of life in her, but did you know that Ireland has its own Helen Mirren, albeit one largely unacknowledged by the city in which she grew up?

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Dubliner Peggy Cummins, born in 1926 and still going strong in her mid-eighties (the clip below is from 2010).

In profile (photo at start of post) the young Peggy looked a bit like the Irish writer Maeve Brennan, dearly beloved of at least two of my commenters, who featured in a previous post.    Full-face photos like the one below (from the Ballybane Enterprise Centre’s excellent Irish actors’ website) show an almost contemporary look, like a prettier, more natural version of the British celebrity Amanda Holden.

Peggy’s birth in Wales was a mere accident of fate, due to a storm – both her parents were Irish, and she was brought up in Dublin.  In fact it was while standing at a Dublin tram stop that she was first discovered by the actor Peter Brock (though the fact her mother Margaret had been an actress herself does make one wonder whether or not this was a complete coincidence).

Peggy started her career with the Gate Theatre Company and went on to perform in London; during her time in the West End she caught the eye of Darryl F Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox.  Invited by him to Hollywood, she subsequently dated Howard Hughes and John F Kennedy before marrying a British businessman.

The 40s was the heyday of Irish actresses in Hollywood and film noir their métier (even the American born stars of film noir, like Gene Tierney, tended to be of Irish origin).  Peggy was no exception, as you can see from her best-known film ‘Gun Grazy‘ (1949) (clip below, entire movie available on you tube here).  Warren Beatty definitely stole a few ideas from this movie when making ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’

Great to see Peggy still around today and in such fine fettle.  It’s just a shame that her city of upbringing has so far failed to give her the recognition she deserves.

Long-time readers of this blog will know I’ve a soft spot for rogues as long as they stay at a safe distance and the subject of this post, born on the 26th January 1928, was certainly a rogue, and also a cinematic phenomenon.

Here’s a threesome of his films:-

The most endearing thing about Vadim was that he nearly always ended up getting dumped.

By women like her (Brigitte Bardot, the first Mrs Vadim)

And her (Annette Stroyberg, the second Mrs Vadim)

And her (Catherine Deneuve, mother of his son and nearly the third Mrs Vadim)

And her (Jane Fonda, the actual third Mrs Vadim)

Well, he certainly had a type lol.   Interesting how none of them were blonde to begin with.

Vadim’s autobiography ‘Bardot, Deneuve and Fonda‘ is a great read but if you can’t grab hold of it, there’s a nice obituary of him here.

In honour of Vadim’s birthday, I’m delighted to announce that the entirety of the films shown in the first two trailers above:  ‘And God Created Woman’  (the film that introduced Bardot to the world) and ‘Blood and Roses‘ (his pioneering lesbian vampire flick) are both available to watch on you-tube.      For those suffering from seasonal affective disorder, the sunlit St Tropez shown in the first movie is the best possible antidote to the depressing Irish winter weather.  Just click on the links in the previous sentence.

Happy Belated Birthday, Monsieur Vadim!

Miss Constance Smith, from Limerick no less.   Wasn’t she lovely?

It seems that a proper biography of Constance has yet to be written.  This is a shame as she had an absolutely fascinating life.   Of humble origins (her dad was in the rank and file of the Irish army) she arrived at Messrs 20th Century Fox in the late 1940s through the beauty contest route rather than by way of the Abbey Theatre.

Connie appeared in a number of movies, including ‘Man in the Attic’ (1953) and ‘Brighton Rock’ (1947).   However her relatively short and (by Hollywood standards) uneventful  professional career pales in comparison to her colourful private life punctuated by car accidents, drug overdoses and random acts of violence.

Connie’s most famous escapade was the stabbing, in 1962, of her then boyfriend, film historian Paul Rotha.  The two subsequently married following her release from prison and, as far as I know, stayed married throughout the remainder of their respective lives, which included at least one further stabbing attempt by Constance.  A typically Irish love-hate relationship (did I mention that Limerick is informally known as ‘Stab City’?)

Constance’s last years were punctuated by alcoholism, mental illness and the inevitable slide into obscurity and destitution.   Her ending – disappearance following release from a mental hospital – was one of the saddest of all the Hollywood beauties.

You can read more about Constance here (great timeline summary of a Hollywood career in self-destruct), here and here.  Links to newspaper stories featuring her (and other Limerick actors and actresses of the period) on the excellent Limerick City Council website here.   All pics above courtesy of fanpix. net.

Ireland then:-

Playing on the beach, Ireland, early 1900s

And now:-

Queuing for chips, Ireland, early 2000s

The first image is courtesy of the National Library digital archive (The Clarke Collection) and the second (asscrack censored) is from broadsheet.ie (The ‘Higher a Monkey‘ Collection).

I’m sure you can all recognise Mr Hugh Grant in this movie, doing a shockingly bad job of playing Lord Byron as a floppy-haired Sloane, but who’s the lovely, bushy-browed girl co-starring with him?  Do you remember her as she was before the fashion posse got hold of her?

Byron’s travails with women are the stuff of legend and the story of the best-known of his conquests, Lady Caroline Lamb, is set out in most excellent detail here.  There’s no doubt but that Byron was a scoundrel but then again any relationship with a lady in the habit of enclosing bunches of  blood-stained pubes with her billets-doux must have been a bit hairy to say the least.

The title of this post is a nod to Byron’s famous diatribe ‘Remember Thee?‘  written in response to a note ‘Remember me?’ left by Lady Caroline in his Visitors’ Book when stalking him following the end of the relationship.  Self-professed Byronic rakes might want to take note.

Lady Caroline doesn’t appear in the film above but she does have her own film ‘Lady Caroline Lamb’ in which she is played by the equally unhinged Sarah Miles.  No 70s biopic would be complete without a bared bosom and the producers of the movie must have been delighted to find out the pellucid qualities of the wet muslin frocks (Grecian, they called them) worn by early 19th century society ladies.   What was considered most shocking at the time was that they allowed the shape of the legs to show through.

Lady Caroline, looking a bit chilly.

Though outdone in modern terms by the Freudian treasure-trove that is the Hurley-Grant-Warne triangle, the Byron-Lamb story (a classic narcissist/co-dependent relationship?) is a fascinating one from point of view of psychological analysis and you can read some very interesting commentary on it here.   Caroline’s own account may be found here.

From the City of Antwerp, 4th October, 1589.

Sgd. FRANCISCO DE CUELLAR

(highlighting added by SDaedalus)

Click to view slideshow.

My commenters often ask, what happened to the Spanish Armada sailors shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland?  Did any of them survive?

The answer is, usually not: those who weren’t drowned, were massacred.  Occasionally you might get one lucky sailor – like Captain de Cuellar – who was fortunate enough to survive.   His tale, as told in the above letter from Antwerp, and published in ‘Captain de Cuellar’s Adventures in Connacht and Ulster’, ed. Hugh Allingham & Robert Crawford, 1897, is harrowing.

Captain de Cuellar (bio here) had an eye for the ladies and one of the few bright points about Ireland, as far as he was concerned, was the beauty of its women.  Lolz.   Did I mention he landed not far from the SDaedalus ancestral homestead?  I hope the girl hermossisma por todo estremo who stole his holy medals wasn’t my Great Great Great Great Grandmother.

You can read the full English text of Captain de Cuellar’s Adventures – not too long, and very interesting, particularly in its descriptions of the savagery of the natives (I blush for my ancestors) here.

I know it’s a serious issue but I always think of the SOPA Act as the SOFA Act for some reason and when I saw that my favourite websites were going offline today in protest all I could think of is the image above (popcorn and remote: out of picture)   Enjoy your pyjama day, guys, and best of luck with the protest.

Without wikipedia I don’t have the technical know-how to black out this site myself and  in any event I have to do some work today – but as some of my commenters might perhaps be at a loose end, here’s a little slideshow I prepared earlier.

All Most of the above are photos of people who later became Presidents of the United States at some time in the 20th century [names subsequently added].   Aren’t they just darling?

For those of you who are not American and (like me) might not have a clear visual image of all the 20th century US Presidents, you can find comparison photos of their adult selves here.

Well, I did promise you something more cheerful.

Not sure if she’s being scripted by Mammy or Daddy, but that’s an authentic eight-year-old bundle of Dublin precocity all right   Been there, worn the t-shirt etc.

Lol on ‘Give me a ballpark figure’.  Quite the little headwrecker.  Just wait till she discovers boys.

I’ve just noticed this was 2006.  That’s over five years ago.  I wonder where Little Becky is now?

‘Hungry Grass’ is a expression used in Ireland to refer to cursed patches of grass which cause anyone standing on them to feel near dead with the hunger.   In Irish, the term used to refer to such land is ‘An Fear Gortha’ or ‘Hungry Man’, reflecting the tradition that the hunger pangs are caused by some sort of supernatural force below ground, possibly even the corpse of someone who previously died of starvation in that very place.

The Hungry Grass legend has been present in Irish mythology for centuries, but it was only after the deaths of a million people in the Great Famine of 1844-49 that it really took root.  For the rest of the 19th century, no one would travel by foot throughout Ireland without some oatcakes in their pockets (oatcakes being the only thing that would release the grip of the Fear Gortha).   The tradition seems to have died out now but there are still patches of hungry grass here and there and I was shown one in County Kilkenny not so long ago.

The Famine didn’t just increase the amount of hungry grass; the relief works commenced in an attempt to alleviate the misery of the starving also changed the topography of the country in a different way. The idea behind these works sounded great in theory – people who want food, should be prepared to work for it, improving the public infrastructure at the same time.

In practice, however, the schemes were less than ideal.  Not only did they ignore the obvious fact that people already starving weren’t going to be in a fit condition to do heavy manual labour (see below), but many of the projects carried out were daft entirely, including, among other things, roads going nowhere, canals that were never filled with water, and ‘follies’ consisting of castles, towers and in one case, a pyramid.

Here’s a slideshow:-

Click to view slideshow.

As you can see, some of these works are quite pretty but the land in their vicinity is reputedly riddled with patches of hungry grass, not surprising given the very high death rate among the workers.

The roads going nowhere (otherwise known as ‘the Green Roads’) are still there all over the west of Ireland and you can see some pictures of them in the slideshow as well.   They inspired a great poem by Eavan Boland called ‘The Famine Road’, which I won’t put up here because I find it too sad.  If you really want to read it you can link to it at poemhunter.com here.

The painting at the top of the post is by Vincent van Gogh and if you were looking at it in a gallery all you would see would be a field of grass.  When x-ray technology was applied to it, another painting of a person appeared underneath and this story of the painting and the face coming out from under the grass reminded me of An Fear Gortha and the Famine and gave me the idea for this post.

I am so sorry if this post is depressing.  For some reason I always write my depressing posts when in a good mood and my cheerful posts when depressed.   I will try to find something more cheerful to put up but probably best not on this post as the Famine is not something to joke about (I lost collateral relatives, not to starvation but to something else – long story too painful to discuss but with a touch of the Sawney Beans).

For my international readers (all three of them), here’s a video giving you the background to what we here call ‘The Famine’ (to distinguish it from all the other, lesser famines) – very good but maybe best listened to with the sound down low as the music is a bit screechy.

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