Poems by the man ridiculed as "the world's worst poet" are expected to fetch up to £6,500 at auction.

Thirty-five of William McGonagall's works - many of them autographed - are going under the hammer on Friday.

The ditties by "The Rangers & Zenit chase Uefa glory ...
Potter fan faces Rowling in court ...
Lots of water 'is little benefit' ...
Male fertility 'set in the womb' ... Tayside Tragedian" have been valued in the same league as Harry Potter first editions signed by JK Rowling.

McGonagall, who died in 1902, was often mocked and had food thrown at him during readings in Dundee.

He was born in Edinburgh in 1825, but spent much of his life in Dundee as a handloom weaver in the jute mills.

His poems cover subjects including Scottish battles and Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

He also took pleasure in writing about death and catastrophe, and his most famous work was a poem about the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879.

A section from it reads:

"So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay..."

'Poem-baiting'

Alex Dove, from auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull, said: "Poetry didn't really come to him until I think he was 47 and the voices in his head told him that he'd be able to write poems.

"Then he thought he was the best thing since sliced bread, he thought he should be the poet laureate and all sorts.

"He tried to hawk these poems around the streets of places like Dundee and he was notoriously encouraged to give performances just so people could make fun of him.

"Poet-baiting became an ongoing activity, they used to throw vegetables at him and all sorts."

The poems which are being auctioned in Edinburgh are expected to fetch more than rare first editions of James Bond novels, a Mickey Mouse book from 1931 and a first edition of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Ms Dove said: "I think he's still popular now because he's so bad, because they're so humorous and a lot of people have kept him going in the media, people like Spike Milligan, Terry Pratchett, and it means he's still in print 100 years later."

McGonagall was also a lifelong temperance campaigner and used his poems to warn people of the dangers of alcohol:

"Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer;
Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer.
What hast thou done to society, let me think?
I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink."

(BBC)

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