The Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth and Marvels - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham

Product Information

In the growth of English short fiction Barham's work looms larger yet. Many a good story and tale are scattered through the corpus of English fiction prior to the 1830s, but it is not, I think, an exaggeration to claim Barham as the first consistent English writer of the true short story." - Wendall V. Harris, British Short Fiction in the Nineteenth Century Ngaio Marsh refers to The Ingoldsby Legends in Death in a White Tie. Troy tells about coming across Lord Tomnoddy and the hanging and the "extraordinary impression" it had on her. She also makes references in Surfeit of Lampreys, the second time (Chapter 19 Part 4) with reference to The Hand of Glory. She also makes brief mention of the work in Death and the Dancing Footman. That Admiral, Lady, and Hairy-faced man May say what they please, and may do what they can; But one thing seems remarkably clear,— They may die to-morrow, or live till next year,— But wherever they live, or whenever they die, They'll never get quit of young Hamilton Tighe! Barham was a political Tory, yet a lifelong friend of the liberal Sydney Smith and of Theodore Hook. Barham, a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, the Literary Gazette and John Gorton's Biographical Dictionary, also wrote a novel, My Cousin Nicholas (1834). He died in London on 17 June 1845, after a long and painful illness. Barham introduces the collection with the statement that "The World, according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Romney Marsh". [4]

Illustration by George Cruikshank for the 'Dead Drummer of Salisbury Plain', one of The Ingoldsby Legends. His father, also called Richard Harris, was a magistrate and known to have been rather rotund, reputedly over 20 stones. Nevertheless, he managed a relationship with his housekeeper and the outcome was Richard Junior." I might now volunteer some advice to a King,— Let Whigs say what they will, I shall do no such thing, But copy my betters, and never begin Until, like Sir Robert, "I'm duly called in!"The narrator in H. G. Wells' short story " The Red Room" (1894) refers to making up rhymes about the legend "Ingoldsby fashion" to calm himself. Kentish folk band Los Salvadores song "Smugglers' Leap" is based on the story of the same name featured in the Ingoldsby Legends. During 1807 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, intending at first to study for the law, but deciding on a clerical career instead. In 1813 he was ordained and found a country curacy. He married the next year and in 1821 he gained a minor canonry at London's St. Paul's Cathedral, where he served as a cardinal. [1] Three years later he became one of the priests in ordinary of the King's Chapel Royal.

I came to this through interests both in the legends of Richard Harris Barham's part of the world (Kent) and in the adaptive use of traditional folklore for literary ends. There's actually not so much of the latter as I'd hoped, but the creation of the Ingoldsby family narrator/s as a vehicle for Barham (an extremely witty and learned churchman) is itself an interesting approach, and he owes much more to the 18th century antiquarian traditions than to the emerging folklore investigations of his own day. The Rev. Richard Harris Barham was a great creator of nonsense, and he had a prodigious faculty for versifying. He wrote entirely for his own amusement; or, as a friend said of him: 'The same relaxation which some men seek in music, pictures, cards, or newspapers, he sought in verse.' Most of his rhymes were written down at odd moments, often after midnight, and with a facility, his son tells us,' which not only surprised himself, but which he actually viewed with distrust ; and he would not unfrequently lay down his pen, from an apprehension that what was so fluent must of necessity be feeble.' In all this helter-skelter of ' mirth and marvels,' begun for Bentley's 'Miscellany' in 1837, when he was nearly fifty years of age, there is nothing feeble in all the fluency. No verse that has been written in English goes so fast or turns so many somersaults on the way. He said once, of a poem which he did not care for,' that the only chance to make it effective was to strike out something newish in the stanza, to make people stare.' If that was ever his aim, he attained it, and not in his rhymes only. The rhymes are marvellous, and if they are not the strictest, have the most spontaneous sound of any in English. The clatter of ' atmosphere' and ' that must fear,'

Read now or download (free!)

In Winston Churchill's The Second World War, when describing the scientific report of the German beams to direct Luftwaffe bombing, given by R. V. Jones of Scientific Intelligence, he quotes from "The Dead Drummer": "now one Mr Jones comes forth and depones …" So Sir Robert dashed to his stables and had his favourite steed Grey Dolphin saddled up. The horse had been specially trained for swimming out to sea. Popular phrases, the most prosaic sentences, the cramped technicalities of legal diction, and snatches of various languages are worked in with an apparent absence of all art or effort; not a word seems out of place, not an expression forced, whilst syllables the most intractable find the only partners fitted for them throughout the range of our language. These Legends have often been imitated, but never equalled." - Walter Hamilton, Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou own'dst yesterday." There is a calm, a holy feeling, Vulgar minds can never know, O'er the bosom softly stealing,— Chasten'd grief, delicious woe! Oh! how sweet at eve regaining Yon lone tower's sequester'd shade— Sadly mute and uncomplaining—"

Richard Barham died following a long illness on June 17, 1845. A memorial bronze was unveiled in his honour by the Dean of St Paul's at the Guildhall, Canterbury, on September 25, 1930.

Sadly Richard Senior died when the young Richard was only seven so the boy was sent off to boarding school at St Paul’s Cathedral. St Paul's Cathedral, London. Picture: John Nurden Barham is a character in George MacDonald Fraser's historical novel Flashman's Lady, he meets the main character, Harry Flashman, while watching a public execution. In H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain describes himself as non-literary, claiming to have read regularly only the Bible and the Ingoldsby Legends. Later in the novel he quotes a poem that he attributes incorrectly to The Ingoldsby Legends, its actual source being Sir Walter Scott's epic poem Marmion.

Barham's great facility was in impeccable if convoluted rhyming, and his writing is explicitly conceived of as diversionary entertainment. I don't really recommend trying to read this through cover to cover, because it's not that sort of writing, but if you're in the right mood it's a cheerfully distracting collection to dip into. I suspect one reason he's invoked only vaguely as having something to do with Kent legends & folklore is that readers these days probably don't get very far into the book before realising it's not what they'd hoped it might be in that regard.A Knight of Cales, A Gentleman of Wales, [Pg 77] And a Laird of the North Countree; A Yeoman of Kent, With his yearly rent, Will buy them out all three!" The collection also contains one of the earliest transcriptions of the song " A Franklyn's Dogge", an early version of the song " Bingo". P. G. Wodehouse refers to The Ingoldsby Legends in his novel A Prefect's Uncle (1903), comparing his title character to the lady in the earlier work "who didn't mind death, but who couldn't stand pinching". In those days Sheppey was covered in woods and was an ideal hunting ground. Indeed, Henry Vlll is recorded as staying at Shurland Hall with Anne Boleyn.