Undiscovered Scotland

 

William Topaz McGonagall lived from 1825 to 29 September 1902. He is widely celebrated as the worst poet to have written in the English language, or quite possibly in any other. McGonagall was born in Edinburgh and spent his childhood until the age of 11 in Orkney. He then moved with his family to Dundee, the city that was to be his home until he moved to Edinburgh in 1895, where he lived above the Captains Bar in South College Street. Until the age of 52, in 1877, McGonagall worked as a handloom weaver, with occasional diversions into amateur dramatics, and Shakespeare in particular.

But then, according to The Autobiography of Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Poet and Tragedian, Knight of the White Elephant of Burmah: "Dame Fortune has been very kind to me by endowing me with the genius of poetry. I remember how I felt when I received the spirit of poetry. It was in the year of 1877, and in the month of June, when the flowers were in full bloom. Well, it being the holiday week in Dundee, I was sitting in my back room in Paton's Lane, Dundee, lamenting to myself because I couldn't get to the Highlands on holiday to see the beautiful scenery, when all of a sudden my body got inflamed, and instantly I was seized with a strong desire to write poetry, so strong, in fact, that in imagination I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears: Write! Write!"

And write he did. Over the following 25 years McGonagall published some 200 poems, in a style that jettisoned all the conventions of poetry and most rules of the English language. It wasn't just that McGonagall was bad, he was so consistently dreadful that many have suggested that he was actually an unsung genius: a man able to manipulate his use of language to make subtle and complex points under a screen of his assumed foolishness. And also a man able to use a unique talent to make a very good living at a time when jobs for handloom weavers had all but disappeared.

McGonagall published and printed his own work, printing them on single sheets called broadsides which he sold in the street and in pubs; and collections called "Poetic Gems". Perhaps most significantly, he became what we'd now call a performance artist, giving readings of his poems in venues. The sport of "poet baiting" became very popular in Dundee: a drunken pastime with overtones of pantomime in which audience participation included the throwing of rotten vegetables.

McGonagall's genius for self-publicity extended to his walking from Dundee to Balmoral after the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to offer his services to Queen Victoria as poet laureate. She was, apparently, not at home, so he walked back to Dundee. McGonagall's theatrical performances only added to his fame. On one occasion he was playing Macbeth, but refused to die after being stabbed by Macduff; on another, his over-exuberance in a battle scene led to the orchestra pit and the whole stage area being evacuated.

Fool, or genius? Well there seems reason to suppose he was no fool. One of McGonagall's early poems celebrated the opening of the Tay Railway Bridge on 1 June 1878:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the silvery Tay,
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array,
And your central girders which seem to the eye,
To be almost towering to the sky.
And a great beautification to the river Tay,
Most beautiful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Each verse starts with the same opening line, but by the sixth verse McGonagall is making a serious point, much discussed by Dundonians of the day, about the apparent fragility of the bridge:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
I hope that Providence will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

And after a prophesy like that, it is hardly surprising that McGonagall returned to the subject, using the same opening line to make the link between the two poems, after the bridge collapsed while a train was crossing it only 18 months after it opened on 28 December 1879:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

And at the end of The Tay Bridge Disaster McGonagall comes, in his inimitable style, to his very serious point:

I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

So, fool, or genius? Genius certainly. all the evidence suggests that here was a man who knew exactly what he was doing, and was able to earn 15 shillings a night doing it. And while he might be a "bad" poet, he remains Scotland's second best known poet; his works have hardly ever been out of print since his death; and his poems or name have been used by performers as diverse as Spike Milligan, The Muppet Show, Terry Pratchett and Monty Python's Flying Circus. McGonagall himself was buried in the kirkyard of Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh.