Cautionary Verses for Childish Adults

By Sean O'Neill

From the dangers of eating cabbage to the inadvisability of rotten eggs, from punch-ups at a village fair to larceny, forgery and insanity "Cautionary Verses for Childish Adults" will ensure that your barely-suppressed titters receive funny looks from your fellow train passengers. This superbly illustrated volume is a collector's piece that will go down in the annals of history as one of the most brazen attempts to subvert the canon of English literature with heavily-salted doggerel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean O'Neill
• Release date: Feb 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311548849

Sean O'Neill

Sean O'Neill is an illustrator and writer living in Chicago. The creator of the Rocket Robinson graphic novel series, Sean loves history, trivia, and drawing cartoons.

Book preview

Cautionary Verses

for childish adults

Sean O’Neill

Illustrated by the author

Copyright © 2011 Sean O’Neill

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

ISBN-13:

LCCN:

For Bruce.

CONTENTS

To the reader

The Scandal of the Spanish Jew

The Unpleasantness at Wair

The Lazy Mr. John O'Dowd

Dr. Fleet and the Parisian Duck Disaster

The Sad Demise of Marjory De Lord

Edgar Bunney's Taste for Fish

The Tibetan Gravy Boat

The Inadvisability of rotten eggs

The Deplorability of chair-swinging

The Reprehensibility of Chewing Gum

On dental hygiene

On central heating

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

To the reader

Dear reader, can I bend your ear -

A painful thing, or so I hear,

That causes you to utter, Ow!

But please don’t interrupt me now.

These cautionary tales are meant

To stimulate the city gent

To give some pause to all that set

Who tend to get the thrills they get

By habits most promiscuous

In tabloid form so dear to us;

They’ll pay for every wild excess

And rue their folly nonetheless.

And politicians, right or left,

Whose ethics may be quite bereft,

If they would take some time to hear

They’d save the odd unwanted tear.

So if you find, belatedly,

Or even unexpectedly,

An invite to compose a speech

Do not be terrified but reach

For this diverting book of tales

And read a few; it never fails

To sober them. Each little gem

Will leave a cloud of woe on them.

CONTENTS

The Scandal of the Spanish Jew

When at your wine or vintage port,

Or sitting at your Davenport,

Reflect upon my uncle Hal

The late Sir Henry Percival

Whose penchant for delectable

And almost undetectable

alt caution illustration 01

Picasso forgeries and art,

With which he seldom liked to part

Was his undoing, so they say.

He’s still in prison till this day

And so are all connected to

The Scandal of the ‘Spanish Jew’.

This famous painting, which displayed

‘The force of Pablo’s palette blade’

Was daubed in Barcelona by

Some backstreet forger from Dubai.

It came to England and, post-haste,

Was passed from hand to hand, encased

alt caution illustration 02

In polystyrene foam and string,

Until Sir Henry bought the thing

For twenty thousand give or take

Deductions. So the famous fake

Just thirty centimetres tall

For decades graced Sir Henry’s wall.

But unbeknown to expert eyes

This painting of but modest size

Was not the only fake it seems.

Desiring to fulfill his dreams,

He bought a