William McGonagall
William McGonagall - A Famous Scottish Poet -
"The world's worst doggerelmonger"
William McGonagall (1830-1902) Sporting long hair under a wide-brimmed hat and an overcoat even on the hottest day, McGonagall was a weird figure as curious as his verses. Born in Edinburgh, the son of an Irish immigrant, he moved to Paisley, then Glasgow as the cotton trade collapsed, but went to live in Dundee at the age of 11. A devotee of Queen Victoria and armed with a collection of utterly banal eulogies of the monarch, he once walked from Dundee to Balmoral to present them to her; he was refused entry and walked back again. This did not deter him from bombarding her with verse letters, which always began in his execrable style:
Most August! Empress of India, and of great
Britain Queen,
I most humbly beg your pardon, hoping you
will not think it mean
That a poor poet that lives in Dundee,
Would be so presumptious to write unto Thee.
McGonagall also became an excruciatingly bad actor, totally oblivious to audience abuse, as he said himself:
Every morning when I go out
The ignorant rabble they do shout
There goes mad McGonagall.
His best remembered doggerel today is 'The Tay Bridge Disaster'.
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