Daily Vocabulary for Better Conversation

This article is about the poetic form. For other uses of the name, see Limerick (disambiguation).

A limerick is a short, often humorous and ribald poem developed to a very specific structure.

The rhyme scheme is usually aabba, 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, the best limericks are usually those that additionally show some form of internal rhyme, often alliteration, sometimes assonance or another form of rhyme.

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.

Sections in poems following the limerick 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.

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.)

Ogden Nash is renowned for humorous short poetry, and often used the limerick form:

There once was a miser named Clarence

Who simonized both of his parents;

The initial expense,

he remarked, is immense,

But it saves on the wearance and tearance.

Writer and artist Edward Gorey also published many limericks, accompanied by his own illustrations. His limericks often play off the humorous tension created by using the normally lighthearted limerick format to deliver grim or horrific content:

There was a young curate whose brain

Was deranged from the use of cocaine;

He lured a small child

To a copse dark and wild

Where he beat it to death with his cane.

For reasons of decency, many collections consist entirely of innocent examples. Amongst the exceptions are several collections by the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who wrote Lecherous Limericks (1975), More Lecherous Limericks (1976) and Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977); he wrote two later volumes in collaboration with poet John Ciardi: Limericks Too Gross (1978) and A Grossery of Limericks (1981).

In 1970, New York's Brandywine Press published The Limerick, a canonical[1] work of bawdy limericks compiled by folklore scholar Gershon Legman, which had previously been printed only in Europe. This was followed by The New Limerick in 1977 (later re-released under the title More Limericks.) The former volume contained more than 1700 verses, the latter about 2700.

The limerick packs laughs anatomical

Into space that is quite economical.

But the good ones I've seen

So seldom are clean

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

-- Vyvyan Holland

Two volumes of Lecherous Limericks were written by Isaac Asimov, the well known science fiction author.

Main article: There once was a man from Nantucket

The mythopoeic man from Nantucket is also a recurring theme in limericks. For example:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

But his daughter, named Nan,

Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

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 than the above example, however, man fron 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.

Similarly Uttoxeter and Exeter have been used as the inspiration for hundreds of limericks:

There was a fair maiden of Exeter,

So pretty that guys craned their necks at her.

One was even so brave

as to take out and wave

The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

Another limerick, attributed to composer Arthur Sullivan, 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

An example in Swedish, attributed to Hans Alfredson:

Det var en ung dam ifrn Grnna

som stjrten s hrt kunde spnna

att hon i detta hl

kunde strypa en l

och till och med vssa en penna

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

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.

John O'Mill wrote several well-known limericks in Dutch, or in an intentional garble of Dutch and English, such as:

A terrible infant called Peter

Sprinkled his bed with a gheter gieter = watering can

His father got woost woest = angry

Took hold of a knoost knoest = tree branch

And gave him a pack on his meter Dutch saying meaning 'to spank'

• Clerihew

• The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (OEDILF)
• Limerick Savant Limerick news summaries
• Limericks by famous people
• Limericks by Richard Long
• Lear's Limericks retold A curious attempt to provide some of Mr Lear's limericks with a little more punch in their final lines.
• 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
• God of Limericks Free Daily Limericks

Books available from Gutenberg:

• A book of nonsense

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