Out On A Limerick

That hinged monstrosity above is a patented Limerick Trout Hook.

Since today’s post is about Limericks, and I didn’t want to feature just one, and because I’ve been “hooked” on Limericks since I first learned to read, I figured it was as good a picture as any.

I love Limericks. Love to read them – love to write them – and I’ve collected them as long as I can remember.

By definition, a Limerick is “A comic, sometimes rude, verse made up of five lines of varied length.”
Limericks have a a very specific structure:
The first, second, and fifth lines rhyme
The third and fourth lines rhyme
The first, third, and fifth have the same verbal rhythm (meter) and length, and so do the second and fourth

Limerick writers commonly take remarkable liberties with language and spelling to achieve that definition. The simplicity of the form makes it easy to compose and probably adds to their appeal

Limericks do not have to be dirty, but most of the best of them probably are.

The limerick is furtive and mean;
You must keep him in close quarantine
Or he sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk and obscene.
- Morris Bishop

While English professors my look down their noses at the form, some of the language’s best writers have composed Limericks. For example, this from Will Shakespeare:

"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."
(from Othello, Act II Scene III )

A couple points here -

• a canakin is a small cup
• It’s not a very good Limerick; I would’ve expected better from the Bard
• They didn’t call the form Limericks in Will’s day. They weren’t called Limericks until the 1800’s

In addition to Old Will, here are some offerings from other famous authors:

There was a young lady of station
"I love man" was her sole exclamation
But when men cried, "You flatter"
She replied, "Oh! no matter
Isle of Man is the true explanation"
by Lewis Carroll

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
by Edward Lear

There was a small boy of Quebec
Who was buried in snow to his neck
When they said, "Are you friz?"
He replied, " Yes, I is —
But we don't call this cold in Quebec"
by Rudyard Kipling

T. S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas
Crying, “What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill On the Floss?”
by W. H. Auden

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called the hen a most elegant creature.
The hen pleased with that
Laid an egg in his hat -
And thus did the hen reward Beecher !
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Our novels get longa and longa
Their language gets stronga and stronga
There’s much to be said
For a life that is led
In illiterate places like Bonga
by H. G. Wells

Of course, some of the best Limericks are anonymous:

There once was a lady named Cager,
Who as the result of a wager,
Consented to fart
The entire oboe part
Of Mozart's quartet in F-major.

or

When Custer was fighting the Sioux,
He sent for two punts, one canoe.
Came a wire the next day,
It read "Girls on the way,
But what in the Hell's a panoe?"

Finally, Google “Shakespeare Limerick” and you’ll find that Graeme King wrote a whole series of Limericks about William Shakespeare. Here are a couple of them:

Young Romeo came on the news
With tears in his eyes did accuse
"Those Capulet scum
Can all kiss my bum"
(then was stabbed by fifteen Montagues)

Young Will had a bee in his bonnet:
"I can't seem to find my new sonnet"
"I don't find that queer..."
(Thought Mrs. Shakespeare)
"I think I spilled coffee upon it!"