Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrow...IFuA&user=&pw=
Charles found the people a cruel corrector;
Oliver Cromwell was called Lord Protector;
Charles the Second was hid in an oak,
James the Second took Popery's yoke.
William and Mary were offered the throne,
Anne succeeded and reigned alone.
|
I was thinking that there had to be a poem about them. Now, if I can just memorize the poem . . . .
That is a type of mnemonic device--a good one at that. Songs are, too. Many, if not most, oral traditions, especially in illiterate societies, were passed down by one or both. Homer's (if indeed Homer was the composer--it's questioned by some people) works were in a type of poetry--some kind of hexameter (that kind of poetry wasn't the rhyming kind, even in Greek--it was based upon syllables in a line, if I'm not mistaken). Look how long they've endured. Homer lived in about 600 B.C.; it's A.D. 2018 now . . . . so, about 2,600 years. Not bad.
I'll always remember how many whacks Lizzie Borden gave her mother and how many whacks she gave her father, because of poetry (no, I don't see why I need to know that, but work with me here, okay?):
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
