REWARDING bad behaviour
Alison Chisholm is delighted by the inventive ways the winners of WM’s Cautionary Tales competition show people getting their comeuppance in rhyme
Cautionary Tales begin with the premise that someone, usually a child, displays elements of bad behaviour and comes to a sticky end because of them. In the tradition of Hilaire Belloc, whose tales have amused readers for over a century, poets were invited to create their own horrible brats and devise an appropriate comeuppance. Obnoxious adults were also welcomed.
Imagination poured by the bucketful. Revolting characters with nasty habits got their just deserts, anything from a reprimand to a premature demise. We had new inventions among the characters, and a few old friends, including Macbeth. Most of the entries had the appropriate quota of humour, and there were poems to make the reader laugh aloud and darker pieces with a more sardonic tone eliciting a wry smile.
Most of the entries followed the Belloc pattern of rhyme and metre, and these were undoubtedly the strongest of the poems submitted. The successful pieces adopted a conversational tone, and used language fluently and grammatically.