1933 ‘Taffy is a teacher’

The following poem, which has managed to survive trapped inside another item for over 75 years, probably didn’t make it to a 1933 Cygnet although it does provide a fairly clear picture of one boy’s feeling towards Taffy Davies (probably in the wake of being repremanded by him!). Long before my time so I can’t really comment.


Taffy is a teacher,
Taffy is a fool,
You’ll find him talking “tommy-rot”,
At the Burton Grammar School.

Mad old Taffy surely is,
He often has a bout,
When he “collars” hold of the nearest kid,
And gives him such a “clout”.

He can’t half get his “duck” off,
When the kids are getting slack,
He gets a “blinkin” queue of them,
And sends them for the “whack”.

His class is quite a mix-up,
A lot of fearful lads,
There are five or six “barbarians”,
And all the rest are “cads”.

Catapults and orange peel,
Peas of course are good,
They shoot them at old Taffy’s head,
To see if it is wood.

Now when Taffy marks the papers,
He developes an awful rage,
He takes a blue-lead pencil,
And scribbles over the page.

Now Taffy’s impositions,
He never lets them pass,
Write me twenty-five times,
I must behave in class.

He seems a very docile man,
But never go by looks,
It wouldn’t be old Taffy,
If he didn’t give “black-books”.

But still, old Taffy’s getting old,
So to keep the class in hand,
Just tell him when you see him next,
He needs a “monkey-gland”.


 

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