Limerick Examples

A limerick is a humorous poem consisting of five lines. The first, second, and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables while rhyming and having the same verbal rhythm. The third and fourth lines only have to have five to seven syllables, and have to rhyme with each other and have the same rhythm.

Limerick Examples

A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican by Dixon Lanier Merritt

There was a Young Lady of Dorking by Edward Lear

Than Shakespeare I'm Greater by Far by Patrick Baybrooke

There was a Small Boy of Quebec by Rudyard Kipling

A Man Hired by John Smith and Co. by Mark Twain

There was an Old Man of St. Bees by W.S. Gilbert

My Firm Belief is that Pizarro by Aldous Huxley

Langford Reed Saved the Limerick Verse

There was an Old Poop from Poughkeepsie by John Updike

There was a Young Lady of Station by Lewis Carroll

There's a Ponderous Pundit MacHugh by James Joyce

The Marriage of Poor Kim Kardashian by Salman Rushdie

Some Popular Limericks

Because he helped bring them to fame, Edward Lear is one of the world's most favorite limerick writers. His limericks often consisted of stories about an old man:

“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!’”

Another of his limericks goes as follows:

“There was a Young Lady of Dorking,

Who bought a large bonnet for walking;

But its colour and size,

So bedazzled her eyes,

That she very soon went back to Dorking.”

Yet another example is:

“There was a Young Person of Crete,

Whose toilette was far from complete;

She dressed in a sack,

Spickle-speckled with black,

That ombliferous person of Crete.”

Other Examples of Limericks

Of course, Edward Lear was not the only writer of limericks. This one was written by Anita V:

“An infatuated man from Dover,

was left by his imaginary lover.

He pulled his hair,

in sheer despair,

forgetting a wig was his cover.”

Another example was written about a Ballerina by Selina Wallis,

“There once was a girl Selina,

who wanted to be a ballerina.

She went on her toes,

and broke her nose.

Then she became cleaner.”

Finally, this limerick is about Fashion and it’s written by Dwarvenkind,

“Can't believe it’s true, must be a ruse.

It seems kids these days actually choose.

It's a very strange fad,

to dress up just like Dad.

Bell-bottom pants and big clunky shoes.”

Nursery Rhymes as Limericks

While you may not have heard of many of the above examples, you likely have heard some of the more commonly known limerick examples in the nursery rhymes we all love so much. Hickory Dickory Dock is an example:

“Hickory, dickory, dock,

The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one,

And down he run,

Hickory, dickory, dock.”

Little Miss Muffet is another famous fairy tale limerick:

“Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet,

Eating her curds and whey;

Along came a spider,

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.”

Finally, perhaps one of the most famous limericks of all time is Mary had a Little Lamb, which is actually two limericks in one as a 10-line poem:

“Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went,

The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,

That was against the rule.

It made the children laugh and play,

To see a lamb at school.”

New Limericks

New limericks are still being written today. For example, the Nickelodeon TV show Spongebob Squarepants featured a limerick that went:

“There once was an old man from Peru

Who dreamt he was eating his shoe.

He awoke in a fright

In the middle of the night

And found it was perfectly true.”

A limerick is a short, humorous, often ribald or nonsense poem,[1] especially one in five-line anapestic meter with a strict rhyme scheme (AABBA), which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century.[2] It was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century,[3] although he did not use the term.

The following limerick is of unknown origin:

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.[4]

Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene, and cites similar opinions by Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw,[5] describing the clean limerick as a "periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity." From a folkloric point of view, the form is essentially transgressive; violation of taboo is part of its function.

Contents [hide]

1 Form

2 Origin of the name

3 Edward Lear

4 Variations

5 See also

6 Notes

7 References

8 External links

Form[edit]

The standard form of a limerick is a stanza of five lines, with the first, second and fifth rhyming with one another and having three feet of three syllables each; and the shorter third and fourth lines also rhyming with each other, but having only two feet of three syllables. The defining "foot" of a limerick's

meter is usually the anapaest, (ta-ta-TUM), but catalexis (missing a weak syllable at the beginning of a line) and extra-syllable rhyme (which adds an extra unstressed syllable) can make limericks appear amphibrachic (ta-TUM-ta).

The first line traditionally introduces a person and a place, with the place appearing at the end of the first line and establishing the rhyme scheme for the second and fifth lines. In early limericks, the last line was often essentially a repeat of the first line, although this is no longer customary.

Within the genre, ordinary speech stress is often distorted in the first line, and may be regarded as a feature of the form: "There was a young man from the coast;" "There once was a girl from Detroit…" Legman takes this as a convention whereby prosody is violated simultaneously with propriety.[6] Exploitation of geographical names, especially exotic ones, is also common, and has been seen as invoking memories of geography lessons in order to subvert the decorum taught in the schoolroom; Legman finds that the exchange of limericks is almost exclusive to comparatively well-educated males, women figuring in limericks almost exclusively as "villains or victims". The most prized limericks incorporate a kind of twist, which may be revealed in the final line or lie in the way the rhymes are often intentionally tortured, or both. Many limericks show some form of internal rhyme, alliteration or assonance, or some element of word play.

Verses in limerick form are sometimes combined with a refrain to form a limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses.

Origin of the name[edit]

The origin of the name limerick for this type of poem is debated. As of several years ago, its usage was first documented in England in 1898 (New English Dictionary) and in the United States in 1902, but in recent years several earlier uses have been documented. The name is generally taken to be a reference to the City or County of Limerick in Ireland[7][8] sometimes particularly to the Maigue Poets, and may derive from an earlier form of nonsense verse parlour game that traditionally included a refrain that included "Will [or won't] you come (up) to Limerick?"[9]

The earliest known use of the term limerick for this type of poem is an 1880 reference, in a Saint John, New Brunswick newspaper, to an apparently well-known tune,[10]

[Pie]:There was a young rustic named Mallory,

who drew but a very small salary.

When he went to the show,

his purse made him go

to a seat in the uppermost gallery.

Tune: Won't you come to Limerick.[11]

Edward Lear[edit]

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

The limerick form was popularized by Edward Lear in his first Book of Nonsense (1845) and a later work (1872) on the same theme. Lear wrote 212 limericks, mostly nonsense verse. It was customary at the time for limericks to accompany an absurd illustration of the same subject, and for the final line of the limerick to be a kind of conclusion, usually a variant of the first line ending in the same word.

The following is an example of one of Edward Lear's limericks.

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 or four lines, according to the space available under the accompanying picture.

Variations[edit]

The idiosyncratic link between spelling and pronunciation in the English language is explored in this Scottish example (where the name Menzies is pronounced /ˈmɪŋɪs/ ming-iss).

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."[12]

The limerick form is so well known that it can be parodied in fairly subtle ways. These parodies are sometimes called anti-limericks. The following example, of unknown origin, subverts the structure of the true limerick by changing the number of syllables in the lines.

There was a young man of Japan

Whose limericks never would scan.

When asked why this was,

He replied "It's because

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

Other anti-limericks follow the meter of a limerick but deliberately break the rhyme scheme, like the following example, attributed to W.S. Gilbert, in a parody of a limerick by Lear:

There was an old man of St. Bees,

Who was stung in the arm by a wasp,

When asked, "Does it hurt?"

He replied, "No, it doesn't,

I'm so glad that it wasn't a hornet." [13][14]

Comedian John Clarke has also parodied Lear's style:

There was an old man with a beard,

A funny old man with a beard

He had a big beard

A great big old beard

That amusing old man with a beard.[15]