For better or verse, I’ll come clean:
To Limerick I’ve never been.
Nonetheless, I’ll take time
For eponymous rhyme,
Since I favour the smart (and obscene).
I’m not sure it’s such a great pity
To miss the place that named the ditty—
One that Angela’s Ashes
Left in tatters and slashes
And more recently’s been called “Stab City.”
Still, the town at the mouth of the Shannon
Has many a cultural fan in:
Stage, music, and art
And words all play their part—
But the link to the rhyme is not canon.
The birth of the form of the rhyme
Is lost in the deep mists of time,
But this much we know:
Two centuries ago
Some London wag published this crime:1
“There was a sick man of Tobago,
Liv’d long on rice-gruel and sago;
But at last, to his bliss,
The physician said this—
‘To a roast leg of mutton you may go.’”
Its catchy quick form was a lock
For light verse made to bruise, jape, or mock,
And you may with a smile
Recognize the same style
In “Hickory Dickory Dock.”2
Over time this verse form got around;
The American first that we’ve found
Was some twenty and four3
Dating to Civil War—
Here is one, just to show you the sound:
“There once was a Copperhead snake
tried to Bite Uncle Sam by mistake;
But the Seven League Boot
on old Uncle Sam’s foot
Soon crushed this pestiferous snake.”
Does that last rhyme make you say “Oh dear,
It’s the same word”? Well, friend, have no fear:
It was done just that way
For nonsense and for play
By the great English poet, Ed Lear:4
“There was an Old Man of Kilkenny,
Who never had more than a penny;
He spent all that money
In onions and honey,
That wayward Old Man of Kilkenny.”
Does that verse make you dizzy or sick?
Well, just wait, for it has one more trick:
Neither wag, Lear, nor Yankee
Named this verse hanky-panky
Anything, let alone “Limerick.”
The binding of place name to rhymes
Has trickled by nickels and dimes;
Our first attestation
Of association
Comes from Canada’s Maritimes:
The St. John (in Nouveau Brunswick)
Daily News5 filler wit did the trick
For better or worse
With this sad little verse,
Note, “Tune, wont you come to Limerick”:
“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.”
So a tune is the source of the title?
Play the tune6 and forestall your requital:
It’s a friggin’ slip jig,
So the rhythm’s too big,
So you may yet restrain your excital.
However, to go for the win,
Let “The Limerick Shanty”7 begin:
Verse stretches to tune
With additional boon
Of a chorus for all to join in.
And quickly you will realize
It’s a game made to extemporize;
Thus did Oxford scholars
Let steam out their collars
With verses more witty than wise.8
And if you’re still yearning to see
How that slip jig match-up came to be,
Well, as (clutching his head)
Von Sacher-Masoch said
Of his Venus in Furs, “Ah, beats me.”
But I will say that I have a hunch—
And I don’t think I’m just out to lunch—
Why the waggish young blokes
Used it for dirty jokes:
It’s the one, two—wait for it—three punch.
If you want to tell jokes that don’t suck,
It’s not just a matter of luck:
It requires exploitation
Of anticipation,
Without which they won’t give a darn.
1 The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women, published in 1821, quoted in “History of the Limerick,” by George N. Belknap, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 75, no. 1 (First Quarter, 1981), pp. 1–32. If you want about as much scholarship on the topic as you can stand, that is the article for you. If you lack the patience for 32 pages, you may yet enjoy “There Once Was a Poem Called a Limerick,” by Matthew Wills, on JSTOR Daily, April 12, 2021.
2 First published in 1744.
3 Ye Book of Copperheads, published in Philadelphia in 1863, inveighing against “Copperhead Democrats,” who favoured peace with the South and opposed abolition of slavery. (If you click the link, be forewarned: some of the rhymes contain racial epithets.)
4 The Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear, first published in 1846.
5 St. John Daily News, November 30, 1880, page 4, column 5, a couple of inches down.
6 “Won’t You Come to Limerick” is another name for “Will You Come Down to Limerick,” a slip jig in 9/8 time.
7 “The Limerick Shanty,” which uses the tune of “Won’t You Come to Limerick” plus a fitting of words with a bit of pause, with a set chorus involving elephants (for some reason) and each verse giving a chance to extemporize. The linked example has verses that, though they are not vulgar, are not all polite.
8 The Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduate’s Journal, November 20, 1879, notes a great moment at “school wines” (convivial events) “when every soul in the rooms has contributed his humble mite to that great resource of inventive talent—the Limerick rhymes.”
Sesquiotica 