Limerick

A limerick is a five-line, often humorous and ribald poem with a strict meter. Even if you’ve never heard of the form before, you’re probably at least familiar with the most common first line of a limerick: "There once was a man from Nantucket."

The origin of the name limerick is debated. The name is generally taken to be a reference to the City or County of Limerick in Ireland 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?"

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.

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, describing the clean limerick as a periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity.

*in the following example, limerick is pronounced "lim'rick" to preserve meter

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

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.

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

The structure of the limerick is as follows:

Lines 1, 2, and 5 have seven to ten syllables (three metrical feet) and rhyme with each other.
Lines 3 and 4 have five to seven syllables (two metrical feet) and also rhyme with each other.
The rhyme scheme is a a b b a

xXx xXx xXa
xXx xXx xXa
xXx xXb
xXx xXb
xXx xXx xXa

The capital X shows the stressed syllables

For my examples I chose to stick with strictly nonsense, rather than the obscene. :-D


There once was a lady from Spain
Who loved to sing out in the rain
Her voice was quite vile
Though she sang with great style
And I do wish that she would refrain!

The problem with Panda is that
She is a most curious cat
she sticks in her nose
where it oughtn’t to goes
and she gets into trouble with that.

There once was a young man from France
At whom all the ladies would glance
He asked them to wed
But the ladies all fled
Leaving him looking askance.

Cro Cumaisc Etir Casbairnde Ocus Lethrannaigecht

Yes, that's right. I never got this post up yesterday so it's poetry today, serial tomorrow. Sorry!

I like Bob Newman’s definition of this form the best: This is an Irish verse form. The name means "Sorry, the translator can't take your call at the moment".

Irish poetry began with an oral tradition which depended upon rhyme to assist the memory. The ancient Irish poets, filidh (from the verb, to see) were highly respected and thought to have magical powers similar to the Welsh poets.

The Irish patterns depend heavily on alliteration, consonance and assonance, sharing the word cywdydd (harmony of sound) with the Welsh. A defining feature of ancient Irish poetry is, dunadh, beginning and ending the poem with the same syllable, word or line. This brings the poem full circle.

Around the 5th century, Christianity came to Ireland. With its introduction the filidh gave up their "magical" role and became "scholars". The poetry that emerged from the 6th to 12th century is intricately formal, dán díreach ("straight or strict verse"). During this time Ireland became known as an "island of saints and scholars".

The early Church in Ireland was unusually well organized. The Latin influenced system enabled the monks to record and preserve much of the ancient poetry. The Cro Cumaisc Etir Casbairnde Ocus Lethrannaigecht developed from this history and carrying the tradition of the ancient bards into the present.

The form calls for any number of 4-line stanzas rhyming abab. There’s also a strict syllable count, and here’s where my sources disagree. While some claim the syllable count is 7-5-7-5, others claim the count is 5-7-5-7. Being Irish, the lengths of the rhyming words are also specified, in this case as 3, 1, 3, 1. The 3 does not indicate triple rhymes; the requirement is simply that the rhyming words are three syllables long.

The verse form looks like this:

x x x x(x x a)
x x x x b
x x x x (x x a)
x x x x b

or

x x (x x a)
x x x x x x b
x x (x x a)
x x x x x x b


Cast Out

At the dawn of creation
when the world was new,
grew the tree of temptation –
fruit enough for two.

The serpent, so seductive
with his apple sweet –
this one act so destructive
such a deadly treat.

Should they have asked permission
Before they had a taste?
Theirs, a sin of omission
And a fall from grace.

Tears of grief and frustration,
yet they left the glade.
Faint the hope of salvation
in a promise made.

Life can be so oppressive
in this world of sins,
making man so agressive -
a game no one wins.