<HTML>It seems fairly obvious that the 'help for My Fforde' thread will become hopelessly boojummed with McGonagall, so I reckon any mentions (favourite lines, links, rivals etc) of the great man should be placed in their own thread. To wit - here.
Anybody who is ignorant of William Topaz McGonangall and his peculiar genius are advised to hotfoot it down to
[
www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk]
to get a flavour of his talent.
In brief, however, McGonangall was a 'poet and tragedarian' - his own words - who decided for reasons best known to himself to tkae up poetry. In fact, in his biography, he wrote "I was suddenly seized to write poetry. 'But I know nothing of poetry!', I thought." Obviously with these qulifications he was always destined to become one of the best known of Scotland's poets.
McGonagall has become more popular in recent years through a series of people recomending him to all and sundry, including Billy Connelly (who contributes the preface to 'Poetic Gems') and Spike Milligan. His most famous works concern the Bridge over the Tay, whaich inspired three poems charting it's construction, opening and destruction in a fierce gale.
McGonangall's wider talent was mostly to refuse to allow anything traditionally associated with poetry (metre, metaphor, imagery, rythm, semblance of sense) to interfere with the quest for a rhyme. Apparently the poems were all written entirely straight-faced, although anybody who cna't stand pretentious Victorian poetry designed for public consumption may suspect more than a little satire; and will probably read in hysterics.
Anyway, to give a flavour of the true extent of his genius, I'll leave you with my favourite two lines, the opening couplet from his poem on the 'Death of Lord and Lady Dalhousie':
"Lord and Lady Dalhousie are dead, and buried at last,
Which causes many people to feel a little downcast"</HTML>