Poetry Codex

Romantic

Richard Harris Barham (‘Thomas Ingoldsby’)

1788–1845

Richard Harris Barham (1788–1845) was born in Canterbury and became a clergyman of the Church of England; he was a minor canon and later a priest in ordinary of the Chapel Royal, and from 1824 a minor canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where he also held a parish living. He wrote under the name ‘Thomas Ingoldsby’.

His comic and macabre verse legends first appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany from 1837 and were collected as The Ingoldsby Legends in three series (1840, 1842 and 1847). Mixing medieval saints, ghosts, devils and Kentish folklore with rattling, outrageous rhymes and puns, they included ‘The Jackdaw of Rheims’, and were hugely popular through the Victorian age.

Poems (66)

  1. The Hand of Glory
  2. Look at the Clock
  3. The Ghost
  4. The Cynotaph
  5. Legend of Hamilton Tighe
  6. The Witches' Frolic
  7. The Jackdaw of Rheims
  8. A Lay of St. Dunstan
  9. A Lay of St. Gengulphus
  10. The Lay of St. Odille
  11. A Lay of St. Nicholas
  12. The Tragedy
  13. Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the Coronation
  14. The "Monstre" Balloon
  15. The Execution
  16. Some Account of a New Play
  17. The Bagman's Dog
  18. The Black Mousquetaire
  19. Sir Rupert the Fearless
  20. The Merchant of Venice
  21. The Auto-da-Fé
  22. The Ingoldsby Penance
  23. Netley Abbey
  24. Fragment
  25. Nell Cook
  26. Nursery Reminiscences
  27. Aunt Fanny
  28. Misadventures at Margate
  29. The Smuggler's Leap
  30. Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie
  31. The Babes in the Wood
  32. The Dead Drummer
  33. A Row in an Omnibus (Box)
  34. The Lay of St. Cuthbert
  35. The Lay of St. Aloys
  36. The Lay of the Old Woman Clothed in Grey
  37. Raising the Devil
  38. The Lay of St. Medard
  39. The Lord of Thoulouse
  40. The Wedding-Day; or, The Buccaneer's Curse
  41. The Blasphemer's Warning
  42. The Brothers of Birchington
  43. The Knight and the Lady
  44. The House-Warming
  45. The Forlorn One
  46. Unsophisticated Wishes
  47. Hermann; or, The Broken Spear
  48. Hints for an Historical Play
  49. Marie Mignot
  50. The Truants
  51. The Poplar
  52. My Letters
  53. New-made Honour
  54. The Confession
  55. Epigram
  56. Song
  57. Epigram
  58. Song
  59. As I Laye A-Thynkynge
  60. Family Poetry
  61. Not a Sous Had He Got
  62. The London University
  63. On the Windows of King's College Remaining Boarded
  64. Eheu Fugaces
  65. Lines Left at Mr. Theodore Hook's House in June, 1834
  66. On the Death of a Daughter

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