Heres a virtual movie of a rather dapper Dublin gentleman reading Irish writer and poet Vincent Caprani's Lampoon "Field Marshall Gouth's statue" a poem written to poke humour at the 1957 attack by Irish nationalists on the statue of a field marshall from the days of the
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the British Empire.
The statue was one of the finest examples of the work of the Irish born sculptor John Henry Foley (1818-1874) who was the greatest and most prolific sculptor of the Victorian age.
One July night in 1957, the equestrian statue in Dublins Phoenix Park of Field-Marshal Sir Hubert Gough suffered damage from a dynamite attack. A few days later an anonymous broadsheet appeared, bearing the following verses. For many years it was thought that they were by Brendan Behan, but in reality they had been dashed off by a young printer and writer, Vincent Caprani, who would later admit the fact with neither pride nor penitence in his book, Rowdy Rhymes and Rec-im-itations (1982).
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are rsserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2008
GOUGHS STATUE
There are strange things done from twelve to one
In the hollow at Phaynix Park,
Theres maidens mobbed and gentlemen robbed
In the bushes after dark;
But the strangest of all within human recall
Concerns the statue of Gough,
Twas a terrible fact, and a most wicked act,
For his bollix they tried to blow off!
Neath the horses big prick a dynamite stick
Some gallant hayro did place,
For the cause of our land, with a match in his hand
Bravely the foe he did face;
Then without showing fear and standing well clear
He expected to blow up the pair
But he nearly went crackers, all he got was the knackers
And he made the poor stallion a mare!
For his tactics were wrong, and the prick was too long
(The horse being more than a foal)
It would answer him better, this dynamite setter,
The stick to shove up his own hole!
For this is the way our hayroes today
Are challenging Englands might,
With a stab in the back and a midnight attack
On a statue that cant even shite!
Author: poetryanimations
Keywords: poem animation yeats joyce colum irish poetry belloc ts eliot chesterton
Added: December 9, 2008
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