Readers’ Gems have been appearing in The Spectator today, in response to their weekly writing competition. Asked to “give William Topaz McGonagall a chance to comment on Scottish independence,” the competitors responded with some excellent (if that’s the right term) efforts:
Bounteous Heavens, let us all rejoice!
For the People of Scotland have been given a Choice
And there is to be a National Referendum
For which we must thank the Scottish Nationalists and London.
But how many will vote No and how many will vote Yes
Only God knows though other clever People may guess
And I think a terrible Excitement will have mounted
Until all the Votes of the People have been carefully counted.
The article also sported a neat summary of the Poet and Tragedian for those poor benighted souls as yet unacquainted with him:
The deluded handloom weaver from Dundee built his reputation on appalling yet beguiling works of inadvertent comic genius. Unhampered by self-awareness, and buoyed up by uncrushable self-belief, he forged ahead with his art in the face of universal mockery and derision. Here is a particularly awful line from his most famous poem, ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’ of 1880:
‘And the cry rang out all o’er the town, Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down.’
McGonagall has had the last laugh, though: while most of his Victorian contemporaries have slid into oblivion, the Tayside Tragedian still has devoted fans more than a century after his death and several volumes of his work remain resolutely in print.
If anybody feels the urge to make their own entry to the independence debate, you know where to send it…
This will never do as there is rhythm in this verse. Even the first line shows its inferiority – 3 beats followed by 2 beats in ‘Bounteous heaven followed by the same pattern of 3 and 2 in ‘let is all rejoice’
More independence-related Poetic Gemmery here: Eck o’ the Cudgel.