The Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian

After what we’ve been through lately it’s surely time to revisit the Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian:

I am the very model of an amateur grammarian
I have a little knowledge and I am authoritarian
But I make no apology for being doctrinarian
We must not plummet to the verbal depths of the barbarian

The Stroppy Grammarian has the rest of this splendid poem here but as a tribute to Nevile Gwynne I will also quote these two lines:

When you crusade for good English, it’s not all doom and gloom you sow
The secret of success is: it’s not who you know; it’s whom you know

(Image – Wikimedia Commons)

Comments

[John Cowan]

Well, it scans, which is more than most of these things do, but there are many instances of false declamation. Structurally, though, there is no "turn" between the sixth and seventh stanzas, corresponding to "In fact, when I know what is meant by mamelon and ravelin", where the protagonist admits that his knowledge isn't quite all it should be after all. Very few Major General parodies preserve this property, though Kevin Wald's Xena version certainly does.