It’s
another Amaze-ing
Words Wednesday
with a fun with language post! Who doesn’t love a good limerick?
 |
| Leprechauns in the City of Limerick, Ireland |
Limericks
are five-lined poems with the aabba rhyme scheme in which the 1st,
2nd,
and 5th
lines are longer and the 3rd
and 4th
lines form a rhymed couplet. Although poetry with this meter and
rhyme appeared centuries earlier, it wasn’t until the late 19th
century that such poems were referred to as limericks.
How
they got they got the name limerick is a debated issue. Some suggest
that it hails from the tavern song, “Will You Come Up to Limerick?”
in which drinkers/drunkards made up their own verses, most with bawdy
lyrics. However, Arthur Deex, editor of the Limerick
Special Interest Group newsletter, makes a better case that the
nonsense poems were adopted by Irish taverns, in particular the ones
in the town of Limerick. By the late 1800’s, the name stuck to the
poems themselves. (See The
Assent of the Limerick.)
Edward
Lear is the most famous purveyor of the limerick. His Book
of Nonsense
published in 1861 included 112 limericks, although he did not use
that term. Here are a couple of examples of his children’s poetry
in limerick form:
There
was a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled
the point of a pin;
So
she had it made sharp,
And
purchased a harp,
And
played several tunes with her chin.
There
was an Old Person of Berlin,
Whose
form was uncommonly thin;
Till
he once, by mistake,
Was
mixed up in a cake,
So
they baked that Old Man of Berlin.
Lear’s
limericks usually began with a person from a place, and that format
has been followed by most. (Poor Nantucket.)
Of
course, most of us don’t think of children’s poetry when we
imagine a limerick. (Once again, poor Nantucket.) Limericks are often
a vehicle for suggestive or even offensive poetry (such as the few I found from science fiction author Isaac Asimov). Since I try to
keep this blog a mostly PG place, I am going to leave you to hunt down
the most shocking limericks yourself if you wish. But here are two
examples, the first featuring a military trumpeter:
There
was a young bandsman of Dee,
Tried
to play with a girl on his knee
But
the point of the joke
Is
he struck the wrong note
And
the wedding’s on Thursday at 3.
There
was a young girl named Bianca
Asleep
on a ship whilst at anchor,
But
awoke with dismay,
When
she heard the mate say,
“Let’s
hoist up the main sheet and spank her.”
(Source:
limericks.org)
Frankly,
if you ask most people whether they like poetry, they would say no.
But ask if they enjoy a good limerick, and you might get a different
response. There is something about the rhythm of the limerick and
ease of the beginning “There once was . . .” that endears it to
most. It’s easy to hear the beats of the poem and find something
interesting to say.
In
fact, the limerick lends itself to many topics. I’ll give it a
shot:
There
once was a storyteller
Who wrote and wrote in her cellar
Though
at times it was weary
She
sent query after query
And now she's a multi-bestseller
Do you enjoy limericks? Do you know any that you could share without blushing? Can you come up with your own limerick below? Have
you ever been to Limerick, Ireland and sung a drinking song in a pub?
