I couldn't tell if Bill made this up or not, so I Googled it and sure enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taffy_was_a_Welshman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taffy_was_a_Welshman)
Quote"Taffy was a Welshman"
Roud #19237
Written by: Traditional
Published: c. 1780
Written: England
Language: English
Form: Nursery Rhyme
"Taffy was a Welshman" is an English language nursery rhyme with anti-Welsh lyrics, which was popular in England between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19237*....
The term "Taffy" may be a merging of the common Welsh name "Dafydd" and the Welsh river "Taff" on which Cardiff is built, and seems to have been in use by the mid-eighteenth century.[2] The rhyme may be related to one published in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book....[Verses snipped]...The image of thieving Welshmen seems to have begun to die down by the mid-twentieth century, although the insulting rhyme was, still sometimes used along with the name "Taffy" for any Welshman.
*And its Roud #19237 is listed directly after "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row,_Row,_Row_Your_Boat%20.html)Go to the Wikipedia entry if you want to read more trivia, verses, and alternate versions of the verses. (Alternate versions of anti-Welsh folk songs: the literary precursor to demo tapes & remixes?)
At first I even suspected this Wikipedia entry was bogus, created by a Rifftrax fan as determined to revise Wiki-history as the Colbert Nation.
I'm sure literary & folk music scholars could have extensive debates over the true origin of "Taffy Was A Welshman". There's plenty more results on Google.
What I'd like to know is: who on the Rifftrax staff owns "The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes"? Yes, they could've just found it on Google, but I like to picture Bill reading this by firelight on a cold Minnesota winter evening:
(https://forum.rifftrax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fg-ecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FG%2F01%2Fciu%2F41%2F57%2F2c1e808a8da0446f36cb7110.L.jpg&hash=6c3371e43447cc1a92a0be647f78013db52b6ffb)
I know I'm late, but thanks for posting. Sadly I don't know any Welshmen, but now I would like to.