It’s lines three and four, even shorter and punchier, which add the vital element of suspense. Lines one and two lay out the scene, but the secret sauce is somewhere in the middle. And yet the five short lines always manage to convey a complete picture or story. Then you have the brevity of the poem, which requires uncommonly efficient use of language on the part of the writer. Something about the rhyme and meter of the poem makes it sound funny, even with the most solemn subject matter. Here’s an original limerick of mine for clarification.īut there’s something else that makes the limerick special, and it’s hard to put your finger on it. The meter moves the words steadily forward, as the reader races towards the punchline. But what I consider more important, and also more difficult to achieve, is the definitive anapest meter of the poem.
Obviously, the rhyme scheme of the limerick is imperative. It comes from British mathematician Leigh Mercer . I’m something of a man of words, but I also have a soft spot for numbers, so this one really pushes my buttons. There turn out to be multiple versions of this beloved limerick, all of them more or less equally obscene.īut there’s one more limerick I’m especially fond of, which is not obscene at all. Metaphysical Limerick anthologies from Fred Hornaday More famous limericks worthy of mentionĪt the risk of disappointing my audience, but in hopes of not violating the laws of the internet, I have not included the famous limerick about the Man from Nantucket. They cling to their old-fashioned fallacies. More up my literary alley, they deal with matters of theology and psychology. Shifting gears, ever so slightly (and no, that’s not some kind of sexual euphemism), I’d like to round out our list of 14 famous limericks with these two from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior and Norman Douglas, respectively.
Just as long as the squirrel stayed virile. I pursued her, subdued her, and screwed her. Who thought she was shrewd: I was shrewder I especially appreciate the elaborate internal rhyming in the first one.
Here’s three more limericks of timeless endurance. Seems that certain topics just never grow old. Presumably they are traditional, of anonymous authorship.Īnd cried “Sir! You’re right up my alley!” Here’s another pair of provocative limericks which appeared in the recent Oscar winner, The King’s Speech. The distinguishing mark of his sex at her. So pretty that men craned their necks at her. Livestock can provide another vibrant motif for the limerick, whether for the purpose of double entendre or towards the subject of bestiality.īut was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.Īnd as we continue, we find that the themes of the most famous limericks do not vary all that much. Who took grain to the mill to get grist with.Īnd here’s another rhyme, equally indelicate, from the same author. The next example, from Algernon Charles Swinburne, provides further evidence of that pattern. It’s a relatively low common denominator, but seldom fails to get a laugh. Indeed, the private parts do come up often in limericks. This well-known limerick, whose author remains unknown, curtly conveys the nature of the limerick, at least its prurient place in popular culture.Īnd the clean ones so seldom are comical. The following collection contains all of the above, so stop right here if you’re easily offended by the graphic and off-color use of language.įamous limericks (not for the faint of heart) The best of them employ clever wordplay and surprising twists, although we almost always know what direction they’re heading in. The most famous limericks revolve around matters of sexual innuendo and downright indecency. But it wasn’t until the late 1800s that limericks gained their current name and developed their notoriously saucy reputation. Edward Lear can really take credit for popularizing the genre in his Book of Nonsense, a children’s book published in 1846. Some say that the French troubadours started reciting limericks as far back as the Middle Ages. The five-line limerick is a poetic form that dates back at least a couple centuries. But a lot of visitors have been coming here looking for examples of those well-known limericks of the lewd and tawdry variety. Since launching my website last year, I’ve already shared several hundred of my own original limericks covering topics as diverse as Moby Dick, metempsychosis and the DSM.