There is some debate as to the origin
of the limerick form
and even more regarding appropriate content. The short answer to the question of origin
is that limericks have been around for quite a while and most likely had their beginning
in Ireland, perhaps originating as drinking songs in the local Irish pubs. The issue of
content is a more delicate topic. There are limericks for children (as in the book
Uncle Switch), limericks that are clean (as in The Looniest Limericks Book in
the World), and even limericks that convey a biblical message
(The Limerick Bible), but the limericks that seem to be remembered the best and
repeated the most are the bawdy ones (Dirty Little Limericks). More will be said
about this later.
A limerick is composed of five lines, with lines one, two and
five being longer than the third and forth lines. That seems easy enough. However, there are
strict rules that must be followed in the construction of these lines. The keyword is
metre (meter). In a sense, the metre is the beat or the rhythm of
the line.
(The limericks that follow are originals by Dr. Birch
unless otherwise indicated.)
Recite out loud the first line of the old Christmas classic,
'Twas the night be-fore Christ-mas and all through the house.
In this line you can hear the compelling beat: da da DUM. This unit of the beat is
called a metrical foot but, unlike the Christmas poem, a limerick contains three
metrical feet in lines one, two and five, and two metrical feet in lines three and four.
Hence:
da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
da da DUM da da DUM
da da DUM da da DUM
da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
TIP #2:
The rule is, you must stick to this metre in the
composition of your limerick.
The metrical foot, da da DUM, is called an anapest,
and, as has been said, there are three anapests in the first, second and fifth lines and
two anapests in lines three and four. From an anonymous writer comes this example:
Said an ape as he swung by his tail,
To his off-spring both fe-male and male;
"From your off-spring, my dears,
In a cou-ple of years,
May e-volve a pro-fess-or at Yale.
There is the option of making the first foot an iamb,
which is da DUM. Thus, a line could have one iamb and two anapests. For example,
There once was a man from New York. I have written the follow, using
an iamb at the beginning of lines one, two and five. Lines three and four begin with anapests.
A din-o once said to his friend,
I think that our kind will soon end.
Ev-o-lu-tion it's called,
But it seems to be stalled,
Un-less there's a monk-ey to send.
TIP #4:
There is another exception.
The metrical feet at the end of the lines of a limerick can
contain an extra "quiet" syllable, as in da da DUM da. For example, There was once
a young man from Mount Vernon. However, when this is done, each of the
matching lines (i.e., one, two and five or three and four) must also end in an extra unaccented
syllable.
If a limerick does not flow easily when read out loud,
something is probably wrong.
John Scott, a United Methodist Minister, has attempted to put
parts of the Bible into limerick form. He was obviously on his own when, in his book The
Limerick Bible, he tried to write "the Creation saga in five lines." Read this one out
loud.
As human we are almost like gods,
But, the "almost" makes ominous odds.
Given power to destroy, we
Can screw things up royally.
A dangerous positions for clods. The pastor's reference to us as clods, is
scriptural, as he quotes Genesis 1:26-3:22 which states "...then the Lord God formed
man from the dust from the ground..."
Most limerickologists, which in the same vein I
will describe an "earthy" group at best, a "dirty lot" at worst, would most likely find
easier reading in the original telling of this story of creation.
*Remember... The easiest way to find the error of your ways and to get
back on the proper metrical track is to do what I have done (and still do quite often in
my own writing). Bold the accent word or syllable... da da DUM. Look what happens
when we do it to the above five lines.
As hu-mans we are al-most like gods.
There is an extra unaccented syllable in the second foot.
But, the "al-most" makes om-in-ous odds
This one is OK, having three anapests.
Giv-en pow-er to des-troy, we
We had said that an unaccented syllable at the end of the final
anapest would be OK if it is followed by a line of similar metre, but that is not an anapest
that precedes the comma.
Can screw things up roy-al-ly.
That's two unaccented syllables at the end. Oops!
A dan-ger-ous po-si-tion for clods.
This line begins OK with an iamb as the first foot, but the second is not an anapest.
You will never get away with writing a limerick
that does not rhyme.
The last word of lines one, two and five must rhyme with each
other, and so must the last words of lines three and four. It is an aabba pattern, and there are
only rare exceptions.
My girlfriend had put on my sweater,
The one with my big high school letter,
And it then seemed to me,
And I'm sure you'll agree,
On her it looked quite a bit better.
TIP #7:
There are exceptions to this rule also.
While here are strict guidelines about rhyming that are adhered
to by compulsive limericks writers, many of these rules are ignored in the writing of
"recreational" limericks. For example, a clever limerick can often get away with a near-rhyme,
such as: The party got wilder and wilder, but who was that boy who defiled her.
Wilder and defiled her sound very close when read aloud.
There are those who would consider it cheating to drop the
final g off a word to make it rhyme, even though we often do this in speaking. Personally,
I have been saved many times by the deletion of a g.
There once was an old man named Cohen,
Who cut off the foot of Tim Bowen.
Now it wasn't that hard,
For Tim slept in the yard,
And Cohen clipped Bowen while mowin'.
*Remember... Just because two words look the same does not mean they rhyme.
Rhyme is not found in what we see, but in what we hear. William Middleton wrote a book titled
Limerick 101 and subtitled "A Concise Collegiate Course for Constructing Comic Limericks."
Unfortunately the professor must have missed his class on rhyming. He wrote:
King Midas was not one to ration
His gold. He had all in his nation.
His most heinous crime,
For which he did time,
Was guild by association.
That was not a typo. His word was guild, not guilt. His play on words was not
particularly effective and gets lost as we struggle trying to rhyme "ration," "nation,"
and "association."
I have discovered the hard way, that in learning what to do
it is very important to learn what not to do. There is an E-How To.com web site where
a fellow identified as J. Kim is the site's "authority" on the writing of limericks. One wonders
how he could have written the limerick that follows. His metre is fine...
it's his rhyming that is problematic. In some regional dialects the words Jerry, Mary, and marry
rhyme, but just a few states away and the same verse becomes painful to read, and what about the words poet and
wrote it? To my ear, this is a "near" or "slant rhyme." Am I too much of a perfectionist? You decide.
There once was a fellow named Jerry,
Who sought to write limericks for Mary.
Perplexed, our dear poet
With E-How's help wrote it.
And Mary he later did marry.
With sincere apologies to linguists from the Great Lakes regions, my Pittsburgh ears rebel and a friend from Philadelphia
found the ending words even more discordant. The message for aspiring writers of limericks and other genre of rhyming poetry is to
be mindful of regional dialects and, unless writing for the local newspaper, avoid those words that are likely to be
pronounced differently in various parts of the country.
There is a tradition regarding the
opening line of a classic limerick.
The classic standard for a first line is to use it to identify
a character, as in "There once was a fellow named Jake," or "A silly old man they called Ned"
(each of these opening lines has one iamb and two anapests).
Another use of the opening line is to identify a location, as
in "There once was a gal from New York." Again, the meter is a single iamb, followed by two
anapests.
A limerick by Stephen Cass, published in the book The Penguin Book of Limericks,
begins with a line having three anapests as it introduces both a character and a location.
A psychiatrist fellow from Rye
Went to visit another close by,
Who said, with a grin,
As he welcomed him in:
"Hello, Smith! You're all right! How am I?"
Whether the content is for kids or adults.
clean or bawdy, a good limerick must be clever.
The classic limericks starts with the introduction of a character,
or identifies the location of an event or both within the first line, the next line might be used
to identify a characteristic, an occupation, or some other feature of the character. The next two
lines are a set up for the final line. A limerick is like a clever joke, holding the listeners'
attention and then surprising them with the clever twist or turn in the punch line, that will be
dealt with in more detail in the next section.
Limericks are typically written to entertain, but as we have seen,
some can be used to educate. The more restrictive the topic or purpose, however, the more
difficult it is to write a devilish clever verse. However, the challenge is far greater. Each
month, the editor of the Limericks Special Interest Group's newsletter, The PENTATETTE,
offers a topic, challenging the group members to write verse related to that subject.
Limericks often do not follow the "rules"
regarding first and last
lines as presented above. Rather, some are used to express a thought, communicate a greeting,
or celebrate an event. These "recreational" limericks are less bound by the need to build to a
surprising climax. Rather than bringing a hardy laugh after a convoluted tale, some limericks
will prompt a smile after an easy or sentimental journey.
It was a change of season that prompted a clever limerist, who uses the
pen name Cap'n Bean, to send me the following Fall greeting.
The autumn's a colorful blur,
And the thousands of leaves will deter
A lawn that's kept neat
When you rake to the street,
And the wind blow 'em back where they were.
There was nothing dramatic, shocking or compelling about
Cap'n Bean's playful tale of a common Fall occurrence. His metre was perfect (as his
always is) and the final line brings a smile. Cap'n Bean often inspires me to send one
back on the topic he has picked. Thinking of Fall and the gathering of the colorful leaves lead
me to respond.
How I love when the leaves change their hue,
For when all of the raking is through,
I'll take just a while
And Jump in the pile -
There's a kid in me, just as in you!
These are playful, but hardly profound. Sentimental and anything
but suggestive. However, a large proportion of the massive collection of limericks are bawdy,
obscene and, in some cases, quite gross. Many of these are outrageously funny, joking of things
not talked of openly. They tease those who are pompous, deflower virgins by the dozens,
and offer detailed descriptions of body parts with grandiose measurement or phenomenal carnal
capabilities. Many are not easily forgotten and some of the ones told today in college dorms
across the country had their origin in the early 1900's... and they are every bit as funny now
as they were then.
Earnest Eiler, in the introduction to his
1979 collection
published under the title There was a Young Lady... A Book of Limericks, observes
"There is something about the literary form of the limerick... that attracts vulgar and
scurrilous authors." Eiler then offers the following limerick, written by Morris Bishop:
The limerick is furtive and mean.
You must keep it in close quarantine,
Or she sneaks to the slums,
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk and obscene.
Eiler seems to confess that in putting together his book, he
"...tried hard to maintain a balance in the favour of the cleaner, more wholesome,
verse, but it was had not been easy." He then concedes to the inevitable and quotes this
old favorite from Vyvyan Holland:
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 are so seldom comical.
Armand Singer, in his Introduction to the
book 1001 Horny Limericks claims "The limerick's subject matter is, simply put, sex and filth,
in all their ludicrous, bawdy, nasty, perverted, all-too-human guises." He goes on to write,
"Filthy as it is, but as well the limerick is an ideal vehicle for mockery. It can, and often does,
poke fun at mores, sex, politics, religion -all of civilization's pious verities."
Richard Lederer, in his book Nothing Risqué, Nothing
Gained, says there are only two categories of limericks: Clean ones and Funny ones! He
then quotes this limerick by an anonymous author:
The limerick's form is complex,
Its contents run chiefly to sex.
It burgeons with virgins
And prurient urgings
And drips with erotic effects.
*Have you noticed that limerists are sticklers when it comes to sticking to proper
pronunciations until it comes to the word limerick! In the line "The limerick packs laughs
anatomical," we are inclined to drop the e and read that as "the lim-rick." It
makes the metre work. As another example, we might write "There once was a squeak-y
clean lim-rick," in which we again hope the reader will drop the e when reading the
word limerick as having one accented syllable followed by a second unaccented one. However,
in the opening line of a limerick above, "The limerick's form is complex," the word is most
likely read as "lim-er-ick," and when so pronounced as having three syllables, it
creates perfect meter. *Remember this, for it will come in handy. However, you must also
remember that you are at the mercy of the reader!
TIP #10:
Some of the best limericks make clever use of the double-entendre.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a double-entendre as "A word or phrase
having a double meaning, especially when the second meaning is risqué." It is a clever
limerist that can surprise us with the perfect double-entendre and titillate us with that
vaguely concealed double meaning. An example of this is one of the few good ones I have written.
A buxom young farm girl named Claire,
At eighteen has golden blond hair.
She grows apples and peaches,
And you know when she reaches,
That she also has grown a nice pear!
Loren Fitzhugh had written a limerick with a double-entendre that
appeared in The Pentatette, the news letter of
The Limericks Special Interest Group.
Now I'm old. All my songs have been sung,
And worse yet, all my springs have been sprung.
Could I go around twice,
I would heed the advice
Of all realtors, "Get lots while you're young."
Always remember, no one has ever gotten rich from writing
limericks.
There once was a man with a yearning,
So he came to me looking for learning,
But I set his head right,
Said, "Write only at night,"
For you'll need your day job to keep earning."
If you have any questions about the writing of limericks, get stuck in the midst of one you
know is destined to be outstanding with a little help, or just want to inquire about any of the
topics mentioned on this web site, e-mail Dr. Birch and you will
receive a prompt reply.
Dr. Birch is a proud member of
The Limericks Special Interest Group
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