Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - "Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

William McGonagall's poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this day. How does someone get that bad at poetry? Or have we been misunderstanding McGonagall all along?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You got a hood of you. I'm take it all. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called, No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming?

I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No Such thing. The wind is fierce, no doubt about it. It's the strongest gale that John Watt can remember,

and he's been working for the North British Railway since 1867, a full 12 years. It's a good night to be safely sheltered in the railway signal cabin, sharing a mug of tea with a friend, signalman Thomas Barclay. As Watt and Barclay sit their tea and look out of the window into the darkness, it can see the faint line of lamps all along the new railway bridge, running almost two miles across the wide River Tay to the city of Dundee. Every now and then, the clouds gust apart,

and the full moon picks out the high girders of the longest bridge in the city of the the longest bridge in the world. A few minutes after seven o'clock comes the signal from the south. The northbound train is approaching. Thomas Barclay steps out of the cabin, into the wind, and waits as the train approaches, the sparks from the wheels visible in the dark. He greets the crew with a smile,

handing over the baton that gives permission for a train to cross. the bridge. The train is moving at walking pace. He sees a child peer out of the window of a carriage as it passes. Then, as the train puffs off over the long, high iron span, Thomas goes back to his friend in the shelter of the cabin and sends a message to the signal box over on the other side of the River Tay. The signal bell rings three times in response, and still the wind howls. Thomas turns back to his mug of tea, but John Watt is gazing out of the window at the bridge. There's something wrong with the train, he says.

Thomas Barkley thinks he's imagining it, but John knows what he's seen. three red tail lamps fading into the distance over the bridge and then a series of flashes three small and one big then darkness no tail lamps the train's gone over Thomas he says Thomas Barclay still isn't convinced surely the train has just disappeared from view after cresting the highest point of the bridge

surely they'll see her again soon but they don't Thomas tries calling the signal box on the other side of the bridge nothing they go outside briefly venture onto the bridge and then retreat

as the wind threatens to tear them off the girders and into the waters below the clouds part again and the full moon reveals the scene A thousand yards of the bridge are gone. The high girders of the central spans. The iron piers that had supported them also gone. And of course, the train has gone too.

And every one of its passengers. It's a catastrophe. But this is not a story about a fatal bridge collapse. It's a story about a poet. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. railway bridge of the silvery Tay. Alas, I am very sorry to say that 90 lives have been taken away on the last Sabbath day of 1879, which will be remembered for a very long time. Thus begins a poem titled The Tay Bridge Disaster. It is widely regarded as the worst poem ever written,

and its author, William McGonagall, is widely regarded as the worst poet. I'll spare you the full poem, but here's a central verse. So the train moved slowly along the bridge of Tay until it was about midway. Then the central girders with a crash gave way, and down went the train and passengers into the tea. The storm fiend did loudly bray, because 90 lives had been taken away on the last Sabbath day of 1879,

which will be remembered for a very long time. When I was just a boy, I saw an illustration of the Tay Bridge catastrophe in a children's picture book. It stayed with me. I can still see it in my mind. The bridge seemed so horribly high and thin and as it collapses into the storm,

the train is just steaming off into thin air. It's awful. And then I encountered William McGonagall's truly terrible poem, and it stuck with me just as vividly, or should I say, it has been remembered for a very long time. Here's the end of the poem. Oh, ill-fated bridge of the silvery tea, 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.

It's awful. I'm obsessed with William McGonagall. I have so many questions. Who was this man? What does he teach us about art? And above all, how does a poem get to be this bad? I have several biographies of the poet McGonigal in front of me.

one of them says he was born in 1825, another says he was born in 1830, and both were written by William McGonigle himself. William McGonigle's parents were Irish, but he was born in Edinburgh and went to school in South Ronaldse, one of the Orkney Islands, remote even by the standards of Scotland. William's education was interrupted by, of all things, an encounter with his teacher's beloved pet tortoise. William was fascinated by the creature,

but when he picked it up to fully admire the beauty of its shell, the unfortunate animal voided its bowels on his hands. In disgust, the boy hurled the tortoise to the ground, nearly killing it, and McGonigal's teacher, enraged, started thrashing his face with a cane. All very distressing. William's father complained to the local magistrate. The magistrate threatened to disbar the teacher, and the practical outcome was that the teacher lived in fear

of ever upsetting William again, who skipped school with impunity. That was the story McGonagall would tell, and his point was clear. William McGonigal was much like William Shakespeare. He had learned more from nature than he learned at school. McGonagall adored his namesake William Shakespeare. He read and re-read Macbeth, Richard III, Hamlet and Othello.

I gave myself no rest until I obtained complete mastery over the above four characters. McGonigal's family moved to Dundee, where both he and his father, worked as weavers. William would give impromptu performances of Shakespeare to his shopmates. He says they were quite delighted, and perhaps they were, since they were willing to pay good money to support his theatrical ambitions. William McGonigal was to play the title role in Macbeth, just as long as he paid one pound to the theatre owner for the privilege, about $100 in today's money.

His colleagues all contributed, and nobody can say they didn't get their money's worth. McGonigal couldn't afford a costume of his own, so borrowed a few items from friends and colleagues and took the stage, dressed less like the ambitious nobleman Macbeth and more like a Highland beggar. The play traditionally ends with a climactic fight in which Macbeth is slayed. by Macduff. This concept proved too pedestrian for McGonagall. One witness described the result, an immortal scene in more ways than one. McGonigal had evidently made up his mind to astonish the gods at his performance, for instead of dying when run through the body by the sword of McDuff, he maintained his feet and flourished his weapon about the airs of his adversary in such a way

that there was for some time an apparent probability of the performance ending in real tragedy. McGonagall saw it differently. The actor who was playing Macduff against my Macbeth tried to spoil me in the combat by telling me to cut it short. I continued the combat until he were fairly exhausted and until there was one old gentleman in the audience cried out, Well done, McGonagall!

Walk into him. And so I did until he was in a great rage and stamped his foot and cried out, Fool, why don't you fall? With Macduff audibly urging McGonigals Macbeth to go down, and Macbeth ignoring him over and over again, Macduff enraged, wrapped Macbeth over his knuckles with a flat of the blade,

forcing him to drop his own sword. McGonagall was now unarmed but undaunted, and he dodged around and around McDuff, looking for all the world as though he now planned to wrestle for it. The McDuff actor, disgusted at the tomfoolery, tossed his own sword aside, and charged in to tackle McGonagall. The sublime tragedy of Macbeth came to an undignified end,

with the title character swept off his feet and deposited on his back side. The audience were ecstatic. They bellowed for McGonigle to be brought forward to receive a standing ovation. What a shame that McGonagall's artistic sensitivities were not put to full-time use. He continued to work as a weaver for decades.

Not to worry. Good things come to those who wait. He would eventually emulate, William Shakespeare, the man he's so admired. William McGonagall would become a poet. Cautionary tales will be back after the break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers

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they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, Gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine that you're on an airplane, and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an... emergency, and we need someone, anyone to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out

that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Do this, pull that, turn this. It's just... I can do my eyes close. I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, no such thing.

We get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then, as we try the whole thing out for real, wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing.

Listen to no such thing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. McGonigall was about 50 when it became clear to him that there was no future in weaving. Machine Looms had taken over. I couldn't make a living from it. But I may say, 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 June 1877. McGonogall was lamenting that he couldn't get away to the Highlands for a holiday. 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,

Right, right! I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself, I know nothing about poetry, but still a voice kept ringing in my ears, right, right! Until at last, being overcome with a desire to write poetry, I found paper, pen and ink, and in a state of frenzy,

sat me down to think what would be my first subject for a poem. That subject was the Reverend George Gill Fillan, a local preacher McGonigal wished to praise. The poem stirringly concludes, My blessing on his noble form, and on his lofty heed. May all good angels guard him while living, and hereafter win his deed.

McGonigal sent the poem to the Dundee Weekly News, which took the unwise step of printing it. Thus encouraged, he sent a second poem, Bonnie Dundee. Oh, Bonnie Dundee, I will sing in thy praise a few but true simple lays regarding some of your beauties of the present day, and virtually speaking, there's none can them gain say.

For superfine goods, there's none can excel, from Inverness to Clarkinwell, and your tramways I must confess that they have proved a complete success, which I am right glad to see, and a very great improvement to Bonnie Dundee. There is more, but alas, the weekly news declined to Prince.

what it described as a so-called poem, at which point McGonagall sent them a letter, threatening to stop sending any more poems. The weekly news dryly explained to its readers that, we can only express the fervent hope that he may put into execution this artful threat. In the summer of 1878, McGonigall had been a poet for just a year

when he received a letter from Queen Victoria's private secretary, Sir Thomas Bidolf, informing him that Her Majesty would like to become a patron of his poems. McGonagall seems not to have registered any surprise at this sudden honour, but he was inspired to make the 59-mile journey from Dundee to Queen Victoria's residence at Balmoral, so that he could recite his verse for her. for an unemployed weaver there was no way to reach balmoral except to walk the journey took three days during which time mcgonigal was fed and sheltered by shepherds

who took pity on him he recorded some of his journey in poetry notably on the spittle of glenshi which is most dismal for to sea with its bleak and rugged mountains and clear crystal spouting fountains with their misty foam, and thousands of sheep there together doth roam. He was drenched by hours of rain, and threatened by the roaring and flashing of a thunderstorm overhead that was undaunted, having told his friends back in Dundee that on his way to see Her Majesty and Balmoral, he would pass through fire and water rather than retreat. Finally, mid-afternoon on the third day, McGonigal reached her majesty's residence at Balmoral Castle.

He was intercepted by the constable at Balmoral's Gatehouse Lodge, who presumably observed McGodigal's collar-length wave of hair, his drenched, patched-up clothes, and his dirty boots, and did not think to himself, here comes a future poet laureate. I showed him Her Majesty's Royal Letter of Patronage for my poetic abilities And he read it and said it was not Her Majesty's letter Someone had played a cruel trick

But McGonagall insisted that the letter was genuine The constable took it away for a while Before returning to announce Well, I've been up at the castle with your letter And the answer I got for you is they canny be bothered with you McGonigle showed the constable a copy of his poems, including the claim that McGonigle was poet to her majesty. The constable objected.

You are not poet to our majesty. Tennyson's the real poet to her majesty. Ah yes, Alfred Lord Tennyson, the actual poet laureate. How inconvenient. In writing the charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson performed a rare feat He created a poem

That is as famous as the disaster it describes Cannon to the right of them Canon to the left of them Cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered Stormed at with shot and shell Boldly they rode and well Into the jaws of death

Into the mouth of hell Rode the 600 William McGonigle never got close to succeeding Tennyson as poet laureate. Yet his poem, The Tay Bridge Disaster, matches Tennyson's achievement. I mean, Tennyson was good, but he was no William McGonigal. But I digress. The constable suggested that McGonigle demonstrate his skills by, reciting some poetry at the castle gate.

No, sir, said McGonagall. He wasn't some wandering charlatan, he was the real thing. Take me into one of the rooms on the lodge, and pay me for it, and I will give you a recital. The constable didn't oblige, but he gave McGonagall some advice. Unless you want to be arrested, go home, and don't think of returning to Balmoral. McGonagall duly began the three-day walk home to Dundee.

When he got back, he wrote up his adventures, sent them to the newspapers, and before long was being mocked, up and down the British Isles. As a headline in the evening telegraph put it, Extraordinary freak of a Dundee poet, William McGonigal at Balmoral, genius still unrecognised. When a cruel prank wastes a week of your life, dashes your hopes, and leads you to being mocked in the national press, what can you do? The answer, pick yourself up and try again.

McGonogle noted that Tennyson was famous for his war poetry, so he decided to dabble in war poems too. They are not very good. The Battle of Cressy begins. To us on the 26th of August, the sun was burning hot, in the year of 1346, which will never be forgot. And ends with the classic McGonogall move of cramming some extra syllables in free of charge.

And the king's heart was filled with great delight, and he thanked Jack for capturing the Bohemian standard during the fight. But McGonigal was a good. soon encouraged to receive a lucrative job offer from the famous playwright and theatre impresario Dion Boussico. Boussico's letter invited him to a fine dinner. But as McGonigle tells the story, he arrived to find several men awaiting him, barely suppressing giggles as McGonigle was served a cheap sandwich. McGonigal had been pranked again. Although, when Boussicoe heard about the joke,

he sent McGonagall a sympathetic letter and five pounds. Enough money for McGonigle to visit London. He had hoped to meet with one or two of London's most celebrated actors, but had no more luck there than at Balmoral. Later, McGonagall ventured to New York, a city he honoured in distinctive style. As for Brooklyn Bridge, it's a very great height and fills the stranger's heart with wonder at first sight

and with all its loftiness I venture to say it cannot surpass the new railway bridge of the silvery Tay. William McGonagall did not succeed in selling his poems in New York so returned to Scotland. He was cheered to receive a letter from the poet laureate of Burma writing on behalf of Burma's King Tibor, making McGonigal, Topaz McGonigal,

Knight of the White Elephant of Burma. McGonigle accepted the honour and wore his medal, a silver elephant, with pride. If he ever feared that this letter was as fraudulent as the others, he shared no doubts. McGonigle spent his final.

final years giving public performances in Perth, Glasgow and Edinburgh, where the main attraction appeared to be the opportunity to hurl abuse and worse at the aspiring poet laureate. McGonagall would dash about the stage, excitedly enacting the action as he gave dramatic recitals of his war poems, clad in a kilt, and brandishing a claymore with perilous enthusiasm. More useful was his small round shield, with which he could parry incoming eggs and cabbages.

William McGonagall died in poverty on the 29th of September 1902. He was 72 years old, or 77. He was buried in a pauper's grave, having practiced the art of poetry for 25 years and having been mocked for every one of them. The death certificate. mis spells his name.

Emile Zola died on the same day as it happens. Zola, a fine writer. He was no William McGonagall. Cautionary tales will return after the break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than add support streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster,

IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA.

Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine that you're on an airplane, and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency, and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, until this.

Do this, pull that, turn this. It's just, I can do it in my eyes close. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devon. And on our new show, no such thing. We get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence.

Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The poetry critics argue that.

that McGonagall has an important lesson to teach us. He is the perfect example of how not to write poetry. If you must read him, be sure to do the opposite of whatever he does. Joseph Salami, an award-winning poet, complains, I know far too many persons who share some of McGonagall's faults. Can we at least resolve that we will not commit the poetic crimes that McGonigle committed? Can we stop with the humdrum plainness, the vapid statement, the dull diction, the crappy metre, the tedious length, the triviality, the commonplace thoughts and the cliched perceptions? Dr Gerard Carruthers, an expert in Scottish literature, agrees.

There is something rather cruel about us still reprinting and republishing McGonigle, he told the BBC, it's time for us to close the book on McGonagall once and for all. But that feels so narrow-minded. I draw a different lesson. We shouldn't complain about a man who wrote bad poetry. We should celebrate a man who wrote poetry. Of course the poems are bad, but most poems are bad. Most acts of human creativity are fairly incompetent.

Most of us can't write novels, not that anyone else would pay to read. most of us can't draw or paint anything that anyone else would pay to look at. Most of us can't act. We can't sing. We can't dance. Who cares? Dance and sing anyway. I think we're prone to making a sad mistake when we think about creative acts. We instinctively set the benchmark at an absurdly high level. We've been spoiled. Perhaps because at the touch of a button, we can listen to Glenn Gould playing Johann Sebastian Bach. We can watch Ian McKellen and Judy Dench performing Shakespeare. We can read a novel by Austin or watch a film by Coppola or gaze at an interior by Vermeer. Not only has modern

technology made these wonders possible, but modern technology also makes more humdrum creative acts economically worthless. Nobody is going to pay me to perform bark or paint a watercolor, but I still play the piano from time to time, and very occasionally I pick up a pencil and a sketchbook. It doesn't matter if there's no economic value in the result. There's personal value for me in the process of trying to express myself. That might seem obvious, but it's easy to forget. In debates about the rise of generative AI, people worry about the death of human creativity. But I don't think generative AI is more of a threat.

to human creativity than the camera or the record player. It changes the economics, to be sure. McGonigal lost his job as a weaver because of machine looms, so he would have understood all about losing work to a machine. But while a new technology changes who might be paid for creative work and what sort of creative work they might be paid for and how much they might be paid for it, it doesn't make creative work impossible.

All of us are free to sit down in front of a piano or an easel and try to create something beautiful. And while it's nice to succeed, it's more important to try. As we grow from children into adults, we often express our creativity less. It might be because we're afraid of failure, which is another thing to admire about McGonigal. He wasn't afraid of creative failure. In fact, he wouldn't recognise creative failure if it hurled an egg at him. That's one way to look at McGonigle anyway, as a man who was always willing to express his inner creativity.

But that's not actually the way I see him. I don't think William McGonagall was admirable because he gave poetry a try. I think he was a genius. You've perhaps heard the story about the man who goes to a doctor. He feels depressed. The world seems so frightening and bleak. Don't worry, says the doctor.

The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him perform. That'll cheer you up. The man starts to sob. But doctor, I am Pagliacci. It's a story that's been retold and remixed countless times, so here's another remix. What if William McGonagall isn't the pompous,

talentless, sad victim of bullies that he seems to be? What if William McGonagall is the most brilliant clown who ever lived? And what if, unlike Paliachi, whose despair became clear when he took off the mask, McGonigal never removed his mask because underneath it he was the one laughing harder than anyone. Think back to that appearance as Macbeth in which McGonigle refused to lie down and die

and wrestled with the infuriated actor playing Macduff. It's hard to think of a funnier scene in the history of theatre. Was it really just McGonagall's arrogance and sincere? stupidity, or did he know full well that he was putting on a show? When the reviewer said that McGonagall had decided to astonish the gods, he wasn't referring to some pagan pantheon. The gods is theatre-speak for the cheap seats. McGonigal was playing to the crowd and specifically to the poorest theatre-goers of all.

His friends from the workshop, who'd all contributed to the world. to get him on stage in the first place, and they loved what they saw. McGonigal certainly gave you a show. And once you read McGonagall's poetry, not as an exhibit of utter incompetence, but as a deliberate sly joke, you quickly detect hints of mischief. A one poem, an ode to the moon, begins, Beautiful moon with thy silvery light, thou seemest most charming to my sight

As I gaze upon thee in the sky so high A tear of joy Does moisten mine eye Just the usual clumsy cliché No, McGonagall's winking at us He knows what we do in the dark The next verses celebrate the way That the moon provides light for the fox

To steal a goose from the farmyard And the poacher to set his snares and beautiful moon with thy silvery light though cheerest the lovers in the night as they walk through the shady groves alone making love to each other before they go home really we're going to believe that William McGonagall was only accidentally funny

mcgonagall is best known today for his poem about the Tay Bridge disaster but in an early poem he always also describes the Tay Bridge when it was first built. Beautiful railway bridge of the silvery Tay, the longest of the present day that has ever crossed o'er a tidal river stream, most gigantic to be seen, near by Dundee and the Magdalene Green.

At nearly two miles in length it was an engineering miracle, but McGonigal was a Dundee local. And like any local, he would have a... have known that the high girders of the central bridge had already been blown down once during construction. Otherwise, why on earth include this verse? Beautiful railway bridge of the silvery Tay. I hope that God 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 Nearby Dundee and the Magdalene Green.

This isn't the work of an idiot. It's the work of an old-school medieval fool, a court jester, using humour to speak truth to power. Two years later, the bridge was down, and dozens of people were dead. After a disaster at a shipyard which killed 38 people, McGonogall composed a long lament, including praise for £1,000 from the directors of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company,

which I hope will help to fill the bereaved ones' hearts with glee. Idiot or court jester? You be the judge. As for those prank letters, from Queen Victoria's secretary, from Dion Boussico, from the King of Burma, Maybe they were hoaxes on McGonagall. Maybe they were hoaxes by McGonagall on the rest of us. They certainly helped to shape the legend. For a man almost universally viewed as a failure,

McGonigal knew how to draw a crowd. When a statue of Scotland's greatest poet Robert Burns was unveiled in Dundee, McGonigal was kept away from the occasion by police to avoid a disturbance of the peace. His Dundee performances so often ended in a near riot that he was eventually banned from giving any more recitals in the town. No wonder he died in poverty. He'd been making 15 shillings a night

the equivalent of a week's wages for an ordinary labourer, Not so bad for a man who lost his trade because of the march of the machines. His downfall wasn't because his poems were terrible. It was because his clowning performances were too riotously successful to be allowed to continue. He died in poverty, not because he was bad, but because he was just too good. We'll never know what William McGonagall was really thinking as he took to the stage. each night. Was he oblivious as he seems to be? A man with skin so thick that neither insults nor insights ever got through? Or was he far more tragic than the mythic figure of Pagliacci the

clown, proud of his poems but knowingly subjecting himself to knightly humiliation because there was no other way to put food on the table? Or was the whole thing a comic masterstroke? Did he never take off the mask, or did he never put it on in the first place? But while we can't read his mind, we can read his poems. And they've brought pleasure to countless people. A few years ago, an Edinburgh auction house put up for sale a collection of first editions of Harry Potter books, signed by the author J.K. Rowling, who, it turns out, named Professor Minerva McGonagall

in honour of the man she described as the worst poet in British history. The books went for a handsome enough price, I suppose. But in the same auction, a rather higher sum was paid for a different literary gem. 35 poems by William McGonagall. some of them signed by the great man himself. J.K. Rowling. If commercial success is the mark of a great artist, then she's one of the best.

But she's no William McGonagall. He will be remembered for a very long time. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at Tim Harford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos Sondel. San Juan at Brain Audio.

Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guthridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembra, Sarah Jop, Marcia Monroe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Keiraposey and Owen Miller.

Portionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Noria Barr and Lucy Rowe. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference to us. And if you want to hear the show, add-free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm. slash plus A new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming?

I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. This is an IHeart podcast.