UK NEWS

£6,000 OF POETIC JUSTICE

William McGonagall: The world’s worst poet?

Saturday May 17,2008

By Kevin Turner

HE was universally derided as the world’s worst poet.

But even William McGonagall might have found it funny just how much money his slaughtered verse accrued at auction.

A collection of Edinburgh-born McGonagall’s works went under the hammer in his home city yesterday.

The 35 poems, many of them signed, sold for a total of £6,600. The figure almost matched the £6,960 a collection of JK Rowling-signed Harry Potter books attracted at the same auctioneers in January. McGonagall wrote more than 200 poems, but no bard has been mocked as much as “The Tayside Tragedian”.

The self-taught son of an Irish cotton weaver, McGonagall was born in 1825. His family moved to Dundee, where he worked most of his life as a handloom weaver in the jute mills.

McGonagall is obviously not the best poet, but he is actually very popular

Alex Dove, a specialist auctioneer

He did not begin writing until the age of 47. However, he went on to pen poems about everything from famous Scottish battles to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

Alex Dove, a specialist at auctioneer Lyon & Turnbull, said: “McGonagall is obviously not the best poet, but he is actually very popular. They were bought by a private buyer who wishes to remain anonymous. It is likely McGonagall sold some of these broadsheet poems himself on the streets.”

The works auctioned off included an ode to Robert Burns, his tribute to “beautiful Glasgow”, a poem about the Battle of Waterloo and another about a fire at the People’s Variety Theatre, in Aberdeen.

In Dundee, he was notoriously encouraged to perform his uninspiring verse just so his audience could make fun of him. He was regularly the victim of practical jokes by students unable to take him seriously.

The poet was lured to London and New York on a series of forged promises. He eventually returned to Edinburgh and died penniless in 1902. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard.