“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he,
“But ’twas a famous victory!”
Robert Southey.
Mr. J. Dixon, in a recent number of Notes and Queries, remarks that “while writing this popular little poem Southey seems to have ‘forgotten his history’ in making Caspar, an old Bavarian peasant, call Prince Eugene of Savoy, “our good prince.” He and the Duke of Marlborough, as commanders of the allied forces, defeated the combined army of the French and Bavarians, and old Caspar could look upon Prince Eugene only as an enemy and alien. Southey calls the little boy Peterkin, a name quite unknown in South Germany. Blenheim has been so universally accepted as giving a name to the battle, and so many places in England have been called after it, that it would be absurd to expect that the real name of the village—‘Blindheim’—should ever replace it; but certain it is that no such place as Blenheim exists in Germany.”
A Battle with Billingsgate.
It was the Christmas holidays,
And seated in the pit,
A Father saw the new Burlesque,
That was so full of wit.