Looking into Limericks
Limericks are a fun, rollicking style—and a type of poetry I’ve never had much to do with. I really had to research this first and was able to pull far less out of my own memories and experience.
There’s a lot about limericks I didn’t know.
For one, my primary impression of limericks were that they were supposed to funny. Apparently, they have a very old reputation for obscenity. Whoops. I don’t think I want to dig too deeply into ancient limericks.
Secondly, I learned that the oldest known limerick was penned by—of all people—Thomas Aquinas. I don’t know about you, but I don’t picture him as the type of guy to be laughing uproariously at a silly rhyme (and certainly not one to sing suggestive songs in the tavern). To be fair, Aquinas’s limerick doesn’t quite satisfy our current rules for limericks—and it was a deeply pious and chaste poem. Nothing unsuitable there.
In attempting to find the most famous limericks, I scrolled past a website where the opening sentences contained words such as “indecency,” and happened upon this humorous and quaint poem by Edward Lear:
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
Turns out it was Edward Lear who popularized limericks. He himself wrote 212 of them—and they were playfully nonsensical, not crude, as evidenced by the one above quoted.
What exactly are limericks anyway? you may be wondering. I’m glad you asked. History and fun facts are all good, but technical details are important too.
Limericks have five lines and an AABBA rhyme scheme. The precise meter may vary, but syllabically based rhythm is important. Furthermore, as you can clearly see from a glance at Lear’s poem, the third and fourth lines are shorter than the other three. Limericks also have a tendency for being clever—with word play, alliteration, internal rhymes, you name it. They’re an opportunity to play with words.
And that, I think, is what sets limericks apart from other forms of classical poetry. Limericks don’t take themselves seriously (even if the first limerick was a prayer by Thomas Aquinas). I’m grateful that the less-than-wholesome varieties of limericks have faded and that Edward Lear brought forward his whimsy and love of words to show us what could be done while having fun with words.
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