Dacw mam yn dwad - Here's Mummy - Welsh Folk Nursery Rhyme
Here is an old Welsh nursery rhyme for Mothering Sunday! Do you remember it? The lyrics are quite strange but children enjoy singing it. Here is a link to it being sung. Why not share with your mam?
Ar ben y Gamfa Wen,
Rhywbeth yn ei ffedog,
A phiser ar ei phen.
Y fuwch yn y beudy
Yn brefu am y llo,
A’r llo’r ochor arall
Yn chwarae Jim Cro
Jim Cro Crystyn
Wan, tŵ, ffôr,
A’r mochyn bach yn eistedd
Mor ddel ar y stôl.
Over the white stile,
Something in her apron
With a pitcher on her head.
The cow is in the cow shed
Lowing for her calf,
And the calf is on the other side
Playing Jim Crow.
Jim Crow Crust
One, two and four,
And the little pig is sitting
Pretty on the stool.
Jim cro was a card game popular with the Welsh miners during their lunch breaks. It has also been linked to awful 'Jim Crow' Laws in America, a brutal segregation of black and white people. You can read the BBC Wales news story here
There is another version of the song with yn gweiddi 'Jim Cro' (shouting 'Jim Crow') or 'Ar Ben y garreg wen' (over the white stone) which one do you remember? As these songs were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth there are often many variations. There are often differences between North and South Welsh songs too.
These old folk songs are often very mysterious - which makes them so fascinating!
12 comments
I remember this song from my first year at ‘Junior School’ in 1957. Even though it was an ‘English’ school in Glamorgan, all of the older teachers were Welsh speaking. We had no idea what we were singing. A translation would have been helpful. Then, the language was in serious decline and these teachers were probably the rearguard. They would have grown up in Welsh speaking communities, gone to chapel on Sundays and partaken in eisteddfodau. Sadly, I had no interest in learning Welsh. One of my regrets.
I learned this at Sunday school in a traditional Welsh chapel in Pantymwyn in North Wales in the 1940’s.
I wonder if any Welsh Nursery rhymes have a political or historical source like many of the English ones.e.g. “Ring a ring a roses a pocket full of posies” referred to the Plague.
I was taught this in a small Welsh chapel in North Wales in the late forties! It still features strongly in my long-term memory.
I was head of music in a comprehensive school in south east Wales back in 2002-2017.
We used to teach this nursery rhyme as part of our curriculum, pupils and staff enjoyed singing and playing this song, I was called into the Head mistresses office and told the song was to be removed from the curriculum as one parent out off 1600 pupils complained the song was racist. I had no idea of any racial connections, it doesn’t seem so obvious from the translated lyrics. There was actually a petrol station opposite the school called Jim Crow station! :(