There's a fascinating piece about McGonagall written by Hamish Henderson, and included in Hamish's book Alias MacAlias.

He puts him very clearly in the tradition of the Anglo-Irish broadside tradition, except that McGonagall always had aspirations to be seen as a real poet, and had that incredible skill for snatching disaster out of the air in anything he ever wrote. "Virtually unparodiable" is how Hamish puts it.

To illustrate that point here are some lines quoted by Hamish Henderson to cap his article,taken from "The McGonagalliode", written by a student a hundred years later, the Laureate Bard of the Edinburgh University McGonagall Society, Gordon Farquaharson. It's affectionate and respectful, and not in a thousand years could Mc Gonagall have written it. Somehow McGonagall had a genius for the poetical pratfall:


O beautiful gilded statue of Eternal Youth, standing above the Old Quad in state;
With your flaming torch, the darkness of ignorance to illuminate,
Hear now the praise of one who knew you well,
As he, for some considerable time, nearby did dwell.
He was none other than William McGonagall, the poet and tragedian of renown,
A citizen and worthy inhabitant of Edinburgh's fair town.
He was truly gifted as a great poet should be
With wisdom, imagination, innocence and sincerity.
Often have I felt as I left a certain hostelry in South
College St, in which I have been quenching my drouth,
That I have seen the shade of the poet himself standing in the nearby close mouth,
Which has given me greater inspiration for the cause,
That is, of proclaiming the greatness of McGonagall to all without pause,
Wherefore I now declare to all who read or hear my lay,
And solemnly avow from now until I reach my hindmost day,
And I am lowered into my grave clad in my funeral robe,
That I shall wholeheartedly endeavour with all my might to
spread the knowledge and fame of the
works of William McGonagall
throughout the
globe!