Seth Davy, sometimes spelled Seth Davey, was a black street entertainer who worked in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

, England, at the turn of the 20th century, and was immortalised in the folk song " Whiskey on a Sunday". Little is known of Davy outside of the lyrics of the song, which themselves have been varied over the years, with his location sometimes even changed to

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

(

Beggar's Bush ''Beggars' Bush'' is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators that is a focus of dispute among scholars and critics. Authorship The authorship and the date of the play have long been debated by ...

) or

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

(

Shepherd's Bush Shepherd's Bush is a district of West London, England, within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham west of Charing Cross, and identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Although primarily residential in character, i ...

) from the original Bevington Bush in Liverpool. No one is recorded in public records with the precise name of Seth Davy. This vagueness had led to the assumption that the character was imaginary, although many Liverpudlians claimed to have seen him in person. But Seth Davy certainly existed. Fritz Spiegl possessed a lantern slide clearly showing a poor black street entertainer with three

jig doll Jig dolls are traditional wooden or tin-plate toys for adults or children. They are dolls with loose limbs that step dance or 'jig' on the end of a vibrating board or platform in imitation of a real step dancer. In London they were frequently o ...

s at Bevington Bush, surrounded by children. Popular belief is that Seth Davy was West Indian, possibly Jamaican, though Ray Costello in his ''Black History'', a history of Liverpool's black population, says that he was West African. Planters from Devon, England are known to have introduced the surname Davy into Jamaica. The existence of the Davy surname amongst black Jamaicans supports the belief that Seth Davy was from Jamaica. A correspondent to the ''

Liverpool Echo The ''Liverpool Echo'' is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror North West & North Wales – a subsidiary company of Reach plc and is based in St Paul's Square, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Sunday, and is Liverp ...

'' in 1957, claimed he was from Port Antonio in Jamaica. Davy sang 'Massa is a stingy man', from the repertoire of

Dan Emmett Daniel Decatur Emmett (October 29, 1815June 28, 1904) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie ...

, one of the stars of American minstrelsy, which contains the lines:

Gallery

File:Seth Davy.jpg, Seth Davy at Bevington Bush, Liverpool (from a lantern slide, circa 1900)

References

External links

''Liverpool & South West Lancs Genealogy''
Seth Davy discussion

blogspot {{DEFAULTSORT:Davy, Seth Entertainers from Liverpool English singers English puppeteers Singers from Liverpool Songs about Liverpool English people of Jamaican descent