Limerick

Sent by Famida Basheer, Ooty, India
Aug 5, 2012

A LIMERICK, as you probably know already, is a five-line poem written with one couplet inserted into one triplet. The pattern of the rhyme is a - a - b - b - a with lines 1, 2 and 5 containing 8 beats and rhyming, and lines 3 and 4 having 5/6 beats and rhyming. Although it is generally believed that Edward Lear devised the LIMERICK, it is nevertheless a fact that the five-line poem was around long before he made popular his nonsense verse. Some claim that the LIMERICK was invented by soldiers returning from France to the Irish town of Limerick in the 1700's.

LIMERICKS are meant to be funny. They often contain hyperbole, onomatopoeia, idioms, puns, and other figurative devices. The last line of a good limerick contains the 'punch line' or 'heart' of the joke. Enough of the technical stuff - LIMERICKS are supposed to be 'fun' rhymes. Enjoy the rhythm as well as the words and as you say the words, clap your hands in time with the rhythm. Or set it to tune! Or better still make one of your own!

There once was an old man from Esser,
Whose knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
It at last grew so small,
He knew nothing at all,
And now he's a college professor.

A mosquito was heard to complain,
'A chemist has poisoned my brain!'
The cause of his sorrow
Was paradichloro-
Triphenyldichloroethane.

The limerick is furtive and mean
You must keep her in close quarantine
Or she sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk and obscene.

Said an ape as he swung by his tail,
To his offspring both female and male,
"From your offspring, my dears,
In a couple of years,
May evolve a professor at Yale."

Archimedes, the well known truth-seeker,
Jumping out of his bath, cried "Eureka!"
He ran half a mile,
Wearing only a smile,
And became the very first streaker. ►