Skogan (Henry)

A poet in the reign of Henry IV. Justice Shallow says he saw Sir John Falstaff, when he was a boy, “break Skogan’s head at the court gate, when he [Sir John] was a crack [child] not thus high.” (2 Henry IV., iii. 2.)

“Scogan? What was he?

Oh, a fine gentleman, and a master of arts

Of Henry the Fourth’s times, that made disguises

For the king’s sons, and writ in ballad royal

Daintily well.”

Ben Jonson: The Fortunate Isles (1626).

John Skogan. The favourite buffoon of the court of King Edward IV. Scogin’s Jests were published by Andrew Borde, a physician, in the reign of Henry VIII.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.