Encyclopaedia

BARDD COCOS (lit. ‘cockles poet’)

A term applied to any writer of doggerel. Victorian Wales had several equivalents of the Scottish rhymester William McGonagall (1825/30-1902), among them the cockle-seller John Evans (?1827-95) from Menai Bridge, the original bardd cocos. He wrote, for instance, of the monumental lions on the Britannia Bridge:
Pedwar llew tew
Heb dim blew.
Dau ‘rocher yma
A dau ‘rocher drew.
(Four fat lions/Without any hair/Two over here/And two over there.)