Doggerel Doggerel Doggerel is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning. The word is derived from the Middle English "dogerel", probably a derivative of "dog". In English it has been used as an adjective since the 14th century and a noun since at least 1630. Appearing since ancient times in the literatures of many cultures, it is characteristic of nursery rhymes and children's song. The Scottish poet William McGonagall (1825-1902) has become famous for his
Midwifery in the Middle Ages the early modern wave of witch persecutions, has prompted several theses that argue for a direct connection between the two phenomena." Several historians have engaged in what Kathryn Taglia describes as "the debate around the issue of witchcraft and midwives." On one side of this debate, citing Thomas R. Forbes' "The Midwife and the Witch", Minkowski writes that "there is little question that Western European countries shared a deep concern for the potential of witchcraft practice by midwives," elaborating that "by the late Middle Ages, the church and civil authorities mandated close supervision of midwives, as expressed in required professional