Doggerel – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

The true origins of an 18th century tomb inscription at Zennor, Penwith, Cornwall

“‘Tis glorious misery to be born a man,” generally taken to refer to a hen-pecked husband, is in fact a misquotation of verse by the 17th century Romford and London poet, Francis Quarles, dealing with human mortality.

Organ-grinding tweets for March 2018

The latest barrel organ news from Hackney, London.

Section of London-Harwich in 1675, crossing the River Lea at Bow.

Organ-grinding tweets for August 2017

The latest barrel organ news from Hackney, London.

He would an elegy compose / On maggots squeez’d out of his nose

Samuel Butler on a writer of doggerel.

Hogarth: Hudibras beats Sidrophel and his man Whacum.

A sensational 1810 Parisian fire scene on top of an 1840s Russian barrel organ

But who are the three noseless Austrian ladies?

Robert Hillingford, The Disaster at the Ball Given by the Austrian Embassy in Paris, 1810 (1897).

Doggerel and the death of democracy

Featuring John Taylor, the Water(man) Poet, Cornelius Cardew, Rick Astley, Luther Vandross, Michael Fassbender and someone else as Macbuff and Macdeath, Bugs Bunny & Friends, and finally John Taylor again.

Title page of John Taylor's Swarm of sectaries, and schismatiques.

Tribute to Vidal Sassoon

Vidal “Bob” Sassoon has kicked his bucket His heaters lie forlorn upon the floor The king of Mayfair perms will mould no more And maidens weep from here to distant Phuket. He never cut no hair in grey Nantucket Those frozen coasts he found a dreadful snore Old Martha’s vineyard was a filthy chore So…

Lament re a case of carelessly induced bicephalism

You may console the catamaran bird during this walk. The catamaran bird (or so I’ve heard) Sobbed softly into its Kleenex: Some drunken twats burned half my slats So I’m neither bench nor phoenix.