This week brings the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and what more excruciating way is there to celebrate it than to quote from the painfully long, celebratory ballad about it by William McGonagall? The Scottish tragedian may have been the worst poet there has ever been. His deadly-earnest works were a source of comic delight for Spike Milligan.
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'Twas in the year 1815, and on the 18th day of June,
That British cannon, against the French army, loudly did boom,
Upon the ever memorable bloody field of Waterloo;
Which Napoleon remembered while in St. Helena, and bitterly did rue.
By desperate attacks Napoleon lost ten thousand men,
And left them weltering in their gore like sheep in a pen;
And the British lost one thousand men – which wasn't very great,
Because the great Napoleon met with a crushing defeat.
And the road was choked and encumbered with the dead;
And, unable to stand the charge, the French instantly fled,
And Napoleon's army of yesterday was now a total wreck,
Which the British manfully for ten long hours held in check.
Then, panic-struck, the French were forced to yield,
And Napoleon turned his charger's head, and fled from the field,
With his heart full of woe, no doubt
Exclaiming, "Oh, Heaven! my noble army has met with a total rout!"
