Limerick (poetry)

This article is about the poetic form. For Limerick (disambiguation), see Limerick (poetry) (disambiguation).

A limerick is a five-line poem with a strict meter, popularized by Edward Lear. The rhyme scheme is usually "A-A-B-B-A", with a rather rigid meter. The first, second, and fifth lines are three metrical feet; the third and fourth two metrical feet. The foot used is usually the amphibrach, a stressed syllable between two unstressed ones. However, it can be considered an anapestic foot, two short syllables and then a long, the reverse of dactyl rhythm. However, many substitutions are common.

The first line traditionally introduces a person and a location, and usually ends with the name of the location, though sometimes with that of the person. A true limerick is supposed to have a kind of twist to it. This may lie in the final line, or it may lie in the way the rhymes are often intentionally tortured, or in both. Though not a strict requirement, many limericks additionally show some form of internal rhyme, often alliteration, sometimes assonance or another form of rhyme.

History

The name

The origin of the actual word limerick is obscure. The first known occurrence is from May 1896; the OED first reports it in 1898. The name is often linked to an earlier form of nonsense verse which was traditionally followed by the refrain that ended "…come all the way up to Limerick?", Limerick being an Irish city. That the older refrain does not match the meter of the limerick has been used to attack this theory. A point in favour, however, is the fact that in other languages, limericks are indeed sung, with wordless (la-la) refrains between them that match a version of this text.

Early examples

Sections in poems following the limericks form can be found throughout known history, from the work of Greek classic poets to the first known English popular song, Sumer is icumen in (c. 1300) and the works of Shakespeare. Othello, King Lear, The Tempest and Hamlet all contain limericks within longer segments. This example is from Othello, Act II Scene III:

IAGO Some wine, ho!

[Sings]

And let me the canakin clink, clink;

And let me the canakin clink

A soldier's a man;

A life's but a span;

Why, then, let a soldier drink.

The first deliberate creation to match limerick form is usually considered Tom o' Bedlam (c. 1600):

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend thee

And the spirit that stands

by the naked man,

In the book of the moons defend yee.

Edward Lear

A Book of Nonsense (ca. 1875 James Miller edition) by Edward Lear

Other examples can be discovered from the 19th century. The first book of limericks, though they were not yet named thus, is The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women (1820), followed by the Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen (1822). But the form was popularised by Edward Lear, who has been grandiloquently dubbed "The Poet Laureate of the Limerick", in his A Book of Nonsense (1845) and a later work (1872) on the same theme. In all Lear wrote 212 limericks, mostly aimed towards nonsense. In his time limericks accompanied an illustration on the same subject, and the final line of the limerick was a kind of conclusion, which usually was a variant of the first, ending in the same word. This is different from the punchline or twist of the modern limerick, that usually has a proper rhyme. Since Lear's limericks are the best-known examples of the classical limerick, and since these poems were not yet called "Limericks", some have retroactively named them Learics, as they are not true limericks in the modern sense of the word. An example:

There was a Young Person of Smyrna

Whose grandmother threatened to burn her;

But she seized on the cat, and said, 'Granny, burn that!

You incongruous old woman of Smyrna!'

(Lear's limericks were often typeset in three lines or four lines.)

Sung limericks

Limericks have been sung as a traditional humorous drinking song with mostly obscene verses. The song is found under the titles "In China They Never Eat Chili", "Sing Us Another One", "Ya-Ya", "Rodriguez the Mexican Pervert" and "Aye-Yi-Yi-Yi". The tune most commonly used for sung limericks is "The Gay Caballero".

Recorded versions

The Limerick Song has been commercially recorded many times. The earliest version of limericks being sung is 1905 under the title Fol-The-Rol-Lol as sung by Edward M. Favor on Edison records. The earliest date for limericks being sung to the "Gay Caballero" tune is May 11, 1931 on the recording titled Rhymes sung by Jack Hylton which was issued on Decca records.

Printed versions

The earliest printed date for limericks being sung is 1928 in the book A Collection of Sea Songs and Ditties from the Stores of Dave E. Jones. Since many of the verses used for this song are bawdy the song tended to get issued in rare, underground mimeographed songbooks. Some of these are (in chronological order):

• 1934. Leech, Cliffor. Bottoms Up!.

Variant choruses

There are several different choruses for this song. One of the most popular in the USA is sung to the tune of "Cielito Lindo" and usually goes like this:

I-Yi-Yi-Yi,

In China, they never eat chili

So here comes another verse worse than the other verse

So waltz me around again, Willie.

Another chorus, to an unknown tune, is not uncommon in the UK:

That was a cute little rhyme

Sing us another one, do--oo--

A less commonly reported chorus goes:

Sweet Violets, sweeter than all the roses,

Covered all over from head to toe,

Covered all over with [shit]

Lyrics

The lyrics for the song are usually ribald and sometimes original. Here are some from the public domain book Sea Songs and Ditties:

There was a young lady named Lou

who said as the parson withdrew--

"Now the Vicar is quicker,

And thicker, and slicker,

And two inches longer than you.

Chorus:

That was a cute little rhyme

Sing us another one, do--oo--

There was a young man from Nantucket

Whose cock was so long he could suck it

And he said with a grin

As he wiped off his chin--

"If my ear was a cunt I could fuck it."

chorus

There was a young man from Samoa

Who had just one inch, and no more

It was all right for keyholes

And little girl's pee-holes

but not worth a damn to a whore.

chorus

There was a young man named Perkin

who was furtively jerking his gerkin

His wife's face grew red

As to him she said

Perkin you're shirkin your perkin

chorus

Here's to old king Montezuma

For fun he buggered a puma

The puma one day

Bit both balls away

An example of animal humor.

chorus

Recurring themes

Ribald verses

Indecent subjects are a recurring theme of many limericks though the less innocent limericks are often considered among the best and the most common. Creating new limericks is a popular "drinking game" amongst English-speaking sailors, and as such, those with a ribald theme can be the most amusing.

Nantucket

The mythopoeic "man from Nantucket" is also a recurring theme in limericks. This literary trope can be attributed to the many whalers who once lived on Nantucket and the popularity of the limerick genre in whaling culture. More typically the "man from Nantucket" limericks portray him as a sexually perverse and hypersexual persona. It has thus been suggested that the popularity of "Nantucket" in limericks stems from the possibility to rhyme it with a number of obscenities.

Deliberate misspellings

The limerick is often spelled to make the ending match in orthography as well as pronunciation, especially when the spelling of one of the words is bizarre:

There was a young curate of Salisbury

Whose manners were quite Halisbury-Scalisbury

He wandered round Hampshire

Without any pampshire

Till the Vicar compelled him to Walisbury

Note: Salisbury was once known as Sarum, and Hampshire is often abbreviated as Hants, giving:

There was a young curate of Sarum

Whose manners were quite harem-scarem (Halisbury-Scalisbury)

He wandered round Hants (Hampshire)

Without any pants (pampshire)

Till the Vicar compelled him to Wear'em (Walisbury)

By further contortion, this can even be extended to the beginning:

A bdellium bdiamond of beauty

Was bdisplayed in a shop in Bdjibouti.

I bought it, then came

A bdelicate bdame

I'm her suitor now, and she my suitee.

The idiosyncratic link between spelling and pronunciation in the English language is also explored in this Scottish example. Bear in mind that the name 'Menzies' is pronounced /ˈmɪŋɪs/:

A lively young damsel named Menzies

Inquired: "Do you know what this thenzies?"

Her aunt, with a gasp,

Replied: "It's a wasp,

And you're holding the end where the stenzies."

There are also limericks that imitate the style/character(of writing, of talking.etc.) of the people(usually well-known people like authors, poets.etc.) they are referring to. For example:

The great poet, John Donne,

Was wont to admonish the Sunne,

"You busie old foole,

lie still and keep coole,

For i am in bed, having funne."

Playing with words

A mathematician named Bath

Let x equal half that he hath.

He gave away y

Then sat down to pi

And choked. What a sad aftermath.

Note the use of pi and aftermath.

A minor league pitcher, McDowell

Pitched an egg at a batter named Owl.

They cried "Get a hit!"

But it hatched in the mitt

And the umpire called it a fowl.

Again, this is a play on a foul ball in baseball, replaced with fowl, or more commonly known as a bird

There once was a man dressed in black

His victims he stretched on a rack

With their every breath

Right up 'till their death

They begged him to give them some slack.

Note "slack" has double meaning with the tightness of the cords and giving them a break.

Anti-limericks

There is a sub-genre of poems that take the twist of the Limerick and apply it to the Limerick itself. These are sometimes called anti-limericks.

Non-rhyme

Some lead the listener into expectation of a rhyme, often indecent, which actually is not used.

There was a young lady from Bude

Who went for a swim in the lake

A man in a punt

Stuck an oar in her ear

And said "You can't swim here, it's private."

Or,

There once was an athlete of Venice

Who liked to play matches of tennis

When a ball hit him hard

He went to a ward

Where a doctor did cut off his foot.

Another limerick, attributed to W. S. Gilbert, replaces the rhyme with association:

There was a young man of St Bees

Who was stung in the arm by a wasp

They asked, "Does it hurt?"

He replied, "No it doesn't"

I'm glad that it wasn't a hornet

Structure

Others subvert the structure of the true limerick.

There was a young man from Japan

Whose limericks never would scan.

When asked why this was,

He answered 'because

I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as ever possibly I can.'

Similarly,

A decrepit old gas man named Peter,

While hunting around for the meter,

Touched a leak with his light.

He arose out of sight,

And, as anyone can see by reading this, he also destroyed the meter.

And,

A limerick fan from Australia

Regarded his work as a failure:

His verses were fine

Until the fourth line.

Similarly,

There was a young man named Wyatt

Who was extremely quiet

And then one day

He faded away

Also,

There once was a man named Budden Lee

Whose limericks ended so suddenly

and th-

And,

There once was a man from the sticks

Who liked to compose limericks.

But he failed at the sport,

For he wrote 'em too short.

This is taken a stage further by this pair of verses:

There was a young man of Arnoux

Whose limericks stopped at line two

...and by extension...

There was a young man of Verdun

...which if completed would be a self-contradiction.

A third example would be the limerick about the young man from Saint Paul, which would be self-contradictory if it were told at all.

Limericks in other languages than English

Although limericks have been written in a great number of different languages, many of these suffer from the fact that the meter of the limerick does not adapt well to such languages as, for example, French or Latin. Good limericks can be written in languages that have a similar natural rhythm to English.

The following example is in Icelandic:

Þegar líkið er glaseygt, svo glampar í,

og í görnum er eitthvað, sem skvampar í,

enda nefbroddur rauður

-- þá er dóninn ei dauður --

heldur drekkur hann of mikið Campari.

A French example, from 1715:

On s'étonne ici que Caliste

Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste

Puisque cette jeune beauté

Ote à chacun sa liberté

N'est-ce pas une Janseniste?

And another French example:

Y avait un jeune homme de Dijon

Qui se foutait de toute religion.

Il a dit, "Quant à moi,

Je déteste les trois:

Le Père, et le Fils, et le Pigeon."

An example in Swedish, attributed to Hans Alfredson:

Det var en ung dam ifrån Gränna

som stjärten så hårt kunde spänna

att hon i detta hål

kunde strypa en ål

och till och med vässa en penna

(There was a young lady from Gränna / who her butt so hard could strain / that she in this hole / could strangle an eel / and even sharpen a pencil)

An example in Esperanto from Raymond Schwartz:

Jen estis fraŭlin' en Parizo;

ŝi dormis sen noktoĉemizo,

feliĉe ŝi havis

- Kaj tio min ravis -

piĵamon en mia valizo.

(There was a miss in Paris/she slept without a nightshirt/happily she has/and that delighted me/ pyjamas in my valise)

The dodoitsu is a short sometimes comic Japanese poem known as a Japanese limerick.

And there is a Latin limerick, viz.:

Prope mare erat tubulator

Qui virginem ingrediebatur

"Desine ingressus,

Audivi progressus!"

"Est mihi," inquit tubulator.

which is a passable rendition, in spirit at least, of

A plumber of Sault-Ste.-Marie

Was plumbing a girl by the sea

Said she, "Stop your plumbing,

"There's somebody coming!"

Said the plumber, still plumbing, "It's me."

See also

• Clerihew

External links

• The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (OEDILF)
• Limerick Savant Limerick news summaries
• Newsmericks News and views in Limerick form
• Limericks by famous people
• Lear's Limericks retold A curious attempt to "provide some of Mr Lear's limericks with a little more punch in their final lines."
• Rude and Tasteless Limericks Warning - has pornographic images on this linked page
• Limericks for no particular occasion
• The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women
• Jarmo's TOAD (Topical Odes Almost Daily) Satirical limericks on the headlines of the day (UK-based)
• Jarmo's FROG (Fairly Random Odes Generally) Original limericks both crude and cerebral
• Limerick-Queen (in German and partly in English) Huge amount of limericks in good quality
• Violent Limericks
• alt.jokes.limericks (AJL), a bawdy Usenet Limerick group
• March Madness Limericks

Books available from Gutenberg:

• A book of nonsense

References

• Cray, Ed. The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs (University of Illinois, 1992).
• "Jones, Dave E." A Collection of Sea Songs and Ditties from the Stores of Dave E. Jones. No publisher. No date (1928). Unpaginated.
• Legman, Gershon. The Limerick.
• Legman, Gershon. The Horn Book. (New York: University Press, 1964).
• Reuss, Richard A. An Annotated Field Collection of Songs From the American College Student Oral Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Masters Thesis, 1965).