This comic narrative has an urban setting, like that of poem 74. In poem 74 the town is identified as Newborough in Anglesey, and although there is no specific evidence in this poem it may well have had the same location. But the story is surely fictional, and could have been located in any of a number of Welsh towns frequented by English travelling merchants. The poet adopts the persona of a proud young nobleman who is keen to create an impression by his conspicuous consumption. After arriving at the town followed by his handsome squire he takes lodging at a public inn. Noticing an attractive girl there, he orders roast meat and expensive wine and invites her to share his feast. Having seduced her with whispered words, he arranges to come to her bed when everyone else has gone to sleep. In order to appreciate what follows it should be borne in mind that in public inns all the guests would sleep in one large room, with several often sharing a bed. As he searches for the girl's bed in the darkness Dafydd stumbles over a stool and bangs his head on a trestle table. The table full of pans collapses making a huge din, and the dogs of the house start barking. On getting up Dafydd finds himself by the bed of three English merchants, who think that he is trying to steal their packs. The inn-keeper rouses all the occupants of the inn who set about searching for the thief. Dafydd hides in the darkness praying to Jesus, and having managed to get safely back to his own bed he begs God for forgiveness.

This poem has often been compared to the fabliau, a popular European genre of comic narrative poems. Sex, or at least sexual desire, is central to most fabliaux, and the protagonist usually employs a clever trick to achieve his purpose. (See John Hines, The Fabliau in English (1993), especially p. 248 where this poem is discussed.) Dafydd would undoubtedly have been familiar with such poems in English or French (for a Welsh example of the genre see CMOC 19 = A66), but the absence of any clever trick and the pitiful failure of the poet's plan makes it unlikely that this poem was modelled on the fabliau. Another important difference is that fabliaux were always third-person narratives, whilst the first-person narrative of this poem makes the poet himself the butt of the humour. If 'Trafferth mewn Tafarn' had any literary model, it is more likely to have been the exemplum or morality tale, as Bleddyn Owen Huws argues in ''Drwg fydd tra awydd': Cywydd 'Trafferth mewn Tafarn' Dafydd ap Gwilym a'r Bregeth Ganoloesol', Dwned 14 (2008), 89–106. Medieval preachers often used such stories to illustrate the consequences of sin, and the prominence of moral terminology in this poem is a clear indication of the relevance of that genre. The poet's principal sin appears to be pride, the greatest of the Seven Deadly Sins, which provokes gluttony and lust. The story clearly shows the proud man being brought low, but it would surely be a mistake to interpret it as a serious moral lesson. It is more likely that Dafydd adapted and perhaps even parodied this popular genre, as he did with several other literary conventions in his work. A good deal of irony derives from the narrator's use of words such as balch (l. 4) which are open to negative interpretation, see Dafydd Johnston, 'Semantic Ambiguity in Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Trafferth mewn Tafarn'', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 56 (2008), 59–74.