I might have known, that in reviewing McKay's Anthology of the Potato, I would be made aware that said Potato Battle was part of an ongoing Potato War.

McKay includes a lyric which is a parody of Thomas Moore's "Nothing in Life can Sadden Us," with its chorus of "Dear creatures! we can't live without them." Of course, to be included in this particular anthology, it has to be potatoes that we "can't live without." The text also name-checks "Poor Corporal Cobbett" but McKay doesn't bother to tell you who Cobbett is.

William Cobbett wrote and published extensively on agriculture, as in his book "Cottage Economy" from the early 1800's. He liked a debate, did Mr. Cobbett, and the more I read of his writing, the more he reminds me of certain members of Mudcat, who shall remain nameless, whose quarrels in the non-music BS threads draw periodic attention from the moderators and even from Max. When Cobbett's publications and their condemnation of the things and people he belittled, met with an emotional response, his own counter-response was always an increase in contentious and inflammatory opinions and statements.

I had thought of reproducing Mr. Cobbett's sentences here. But I read too many of them and lost the stomach for it. Suffice to say that he really really hates Shakespeare, Milton (especially Paradise Lost), and potatoes -- and, yes, one of his more infamous tracts roundly condemns all three, one after the other.

If you must look him up, here is one place to start:

Cobbett's Weekly Political Register. Volume XXIX, no. 7. London, Saturday Nov. 18, 1815.
To the Editor of the Agricultural Magazine.
On the subject of Potatoes.
London: G. Houston, 1815

quote:
"It has become, of late years, the fashion to extol the virtues of potatoes, as it has been to admire the writings of Milton and Shakespear...."