Rev Benjamin Thomas

“Myfyr Emlyn”
1836-1893

One of the most popular of recent Welsh songs is “Can y D.D.” by the late Rev. Benjamin Thomas, “Myfyr Emlyn” of Narbeth. The song was translated by the Rev. D. Davies, of Brighton, and appears in the “Christian Pictorial.” In English dress it reads quite as well as in the original. Mr. Davies, states: “For many years, the “Song of the D.D.” exerted a wholesome check upon the wholesale importation of American degrees into the Principality, which at one time threatened to become a public scandal. Of this song seems to have been a partially forgotten, with the result that there appear to be increasing signs of a revival of trade in American degrees.” Here are a few of the verses:

I’ve been hoping weary years,
Hoping long that day to see,
When my name may yet be followed
By the mystical D.D.
Dear appendage!
More substantial than my head

Well, I know that I am not learned.
And of depth I cannot boast,
For my gifts are not an ocean,
But a pailful at the most,
Notwithstanding’
I am yearning for D

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