Tuesday, September 28, 2010

News at Eleven: Dundee-based historian Dr. Norman Watson,

in a book, Poet McGonagall: The Biography of William McGonagall, says that the "Bard of the Silv'ry Tay", may have had Asperger's Syndrome, a disorder on the autistic spectrum.

Dr. Watson cites as evidence the poet's indifference to public humiliation--he spent much of his career being pelted with flour, fish and eggs at public readings and on one occasion was knocked out by a brick--and "an astonishing repetition of phrases" in his doggerel.

Over sixty of his "poems" begin "'Twas", and he constantly used the phrase "beautiful to be seen".

from The Daily Telegraph: World's worst poet 'may have been autistic'

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