Limericks

Original limericks by Dick Ford,
(plus some from anthologies and other sources).

CAUTION: Some limericks may offend some people.
 

An astronomer almost maniacal,
Couldn't bear it to watch the Zodiacal.
He would so often stare
At old Ursa the bear.
Oh, the major of which is kodiakal.

An old classicist somewhat lupine,
Wed a latinist he thought divine.
They would both conjugate,
For she grew quite irate,
If he told her he wished to decline.
 

------------
L.KINTZ at 23:01 EDT
[a post to GEnie's Limerick Topic in the Humor area; circa1992]

There was a young fellow named Hyde
He fell through an outhouse and died
His unfortunate brother,
He fell through another
And now their interred side by side.

I've always wondered if the author of this meant the pun in addition
to the limererick?
------------

[my responses]

The old holes in the outhouse were wide;
So no wonder the boys fell inside.
And now they're interred
Under ten tons of turd.
From a ride through a Hyde house outside.

A young woman exclaimed, "Oh, my word!"
When she squishily stepped in a turd.
Her shoe was so 'airy'
She thought it was scary.
So she rapidly had it interred.

...

An old man from a distance admired
A young lady so smartly attired.
From her toes to her nose,
She wore rose and peach clothes,
And the pink he so hotly desired.
 

If the Final Frontier is in Space,
And the Spinal Frontier is a Face,
I think I can show,
Therefore and ergo,
That Vaginal Frontier is First Place.
 

He called it his own rhesus thesis:
To give all the apes Reese's Pieces;
[Because, if you don't,
It won't become wont]
To stifle the apes' recess sneezes.
 

There was an old lady from Limerick
Who did something that rhymed with Limerick. *
Because of her age
She thought it was sage
To have rosemaried, thymed in Limerick.
 

[*The first two lines comprised a joke in 'Lovejoy'.
I had to finish it.]

There was an old lady from Limerick,
Whose poems became supernumeric.
Her fame was so wide
That when she had died,
The service they gave her was Homeric.
 

A sly lawyer once had the capacity
To tenaciously claim perspicacity,
But attempts at veracity
Only showed his mendacity
Any time he would practice loquacity.
 

He asked for her capitulation
To join him in wild copulation.
She should have said maybe;
Now she'll have a baby,
And add to the whole population.
 

She would never have used an obscenity
When she wrote about man's masculinity.
For to her, words with rudeness,
Crudeness, lewdness, or nudeness
Would disturb her Victorian serenity.
 

The First Lady whose first name is Hillary,
Ordered soldiers to fire the artillery,
Though they tried many ways,
They just started a blaze,
So she punished them all in the pillory.

------------
Waxing philosophical, we turn to Subjective Idealism, the idea that material
objects only exist when they are perceived:

There was a young man who said: God
Must think it exceedingly odd
That the juniper tree
Just ceases to be
When there's no-one about in the quad.

To which Monsignor Ronald Knox replied:

Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad;
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours Faithfully,
God
 

Quoted by Willard Espy
------------

Some Nonsense Limericks by Edward Lear [1846]

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!

There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a bee;
When they said, 'Does it Buzz?'
He replied, 'Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!'

There was an old Lady of Chertsey,
Who made a remarkable curtsey;
She whirled round and round,
Till she sunk underground,
Which distressed all the people of Chertsey.

There was an old man who said, 'Hush!'
I perceive a young bird in this bush!'
When they said, 'Is it small?'
He replied, 'Not at all!
It is four times as big as the bush!'
 

There was an old man of Thermopylae,
Who never did anything properly;
But they said, 'If you choose
To boil eggs in your shoes,
You shall never remain in Thermopylae.'
------------

The Complete Rhyming Dictionary states that the Limerick is the only
poetic form indigenous to the English language, appearing first in Mother
Goose in 1719. A few examples of old Limericks:

As I was going to Bonner,
Upon my word of honor,
I met a pig
Without a wig,
As I was going to Bonner.
[Nursery Rhymes, Mother Goose]

There was an old soldier of Bister
Went walking one day with his sister,
When a cow at one poke
Tossed her into an oak,
Before the old gentleman missed her.
[Nursery Rhymes, Mother Goose]

An amorous M. A.
Says that Cupid, that C. D.,
Doesn't cast for his health,
But is rolling in wealth--
He's the John Jaco-B. H.
Anonymous

M. A. = Master of Arts

C. D. = Caster of Darts

B. H. = Bastor of Hearts

There was a young lady of Diss,
Who said, "Now I think skating bliss!"
This no more will she state,
For a wheel off her skate
!siht ekil gnihtemos pu hsinif reh edaM

[only upside down too]
------------

From THE LIMERICK edited by G. Legman

There was a young girl of Aberystwith
Who took grain to the mill to get grist with.
The miller's son, Jack,
Laid her flat on her back,
And united the organs they pissed with.

There was a young lady of Exeter,
So pretty, that men craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

There was a young plumber of Leigh
Who was plumbing a girl by the sea.
She said, "Stop your plumbing,
There's somebody coming!"
Said the plumber, still plumbing, "It's me." 1927

Il y avait un plombier, Francois,
Qui plombait sa femme dans le Bois.
Dit-elle, "Arretez!
J'entends quelqu'un venait."
Dit le plombier, en plombant, "C'est moi." 1941

Es giebt ein Arbeiter von Tinz,
Er schlaeft mit ein Maedel von Linz.
Sie sagt, "Halt sein' plummen,
Ich hoere Mann kommen."
"Jacht, jacht, " sagt der Plummer. "Ich binz." 1952
------------

There was a young lady named Rose,
With erogenous zones in her toes.
She remained onanistic
Till a foot-fetichistic
Young man became one of her beaux.
------------

From the anthology,

Prope mare erat tubulator
Qui virginem ingrediebatur.
Dessine ingressus
Audivi progressus :
Est mihi inquit tubulator.

A young violinist from Rio
Was seducing a lady named Cleo.
As she took down her panties
She said, "No andantes;
I want this allegro con brio!"

Une jolie e'pousette a` Tours
Voulait de gig-gig tous les jours.
Mais le mari disait, "Non!
De trop n'est pas bon!
Mon derrie`re exige du secours!"

Visas erat : huic geminarum
Dispar modus testicularum :
Minor haec nihili,
Palma triplici,
Jam facerat altera clarum

There was a young lady of Spain
Whose face was exceedingly plain,
But her cunt had a pucker
That mad the men fuck her,
Again, and again, and again.

Il y avait une madame de Lahore
Dont la figure n'e'tat la meilleure,
Mais la vagine tre`s forte,
Toujours ouverte la porte,
Encore, et encore, et encore.

De Hispanice puella verumque
Simplex oris verborumque
Tulit potens vagina
Hominum agmina
Iterum iterum iterumque.

------------
There was a young lady of Chichester
Who made all the saints in their niches stir.
One morning at matins
Her breasts in white satins
Made the Bishop of Chichester's britches stir.

------------
 

Have you heard of the Widow O'Reilly
Who esteemed her late husband so highly
That in spite of the scandal,
Her umbrella handle
Was made of his _membrum virile_.

A widow who lived in Rangoon
Hung a black ribboned wreath on her womb,
"To remind me," she said,
"Of my husband who's dead,
And of what put him into his tomb."

There was a young lady named Smith
Whose virtue was largely a myth.
She said, "Try as I can
I can't find a man
Who it's fun to be virtuous with."
------------
 

The limerick form is complex
Its contents run chiefly to sex.
It burgeons with virgeons
And masculine urgeons,
And swarms with erotic effex.

There was a young fellow named Lancelot
Whom his neighbors all looked on askance a lot.
Whenever he'd pass
A presentable lass,
The front of his pant would advance a lot.
 

------------
 

Said Einstein, "I have an equation
Which science might call Rabelaisian.
Let P be virginity
Approaching infinity,
And U be a constant, persuasion.

"Now if P over U be inverted
And the squre root of U be inserted
X times over P,
The results, Q.E.D.
Is a relative," Einstein asserted.

Footnote: "The angle of the dangle decreases with the
sag of the bag and increases with the heat
of the meat in proportion to the mass of
the ass and the beauty of the cutie."

While Titian was mixing rose-madder,
His model posed nude on a ladder.
Her position, to Titian,
Suggested coition,
So he climbed up the ladder and had 'er.

Commentary from a stranger with his own definite ideas about
limericks and spelling:

Subject:          Limericks of varying quality
   Date:          Mon, 06 Sep 1999 10:53:49 +0100
   From:          Jenner <jenner@gpo.sonnet.co.uk>
     To:          dickford@netdoor.com
Dear Sir,

Whilst your own limericks do for the genre what Atila the Hun
attempted
to do for world peace, I thank you for the inclusion of the quality
compositions.  In marked contrast to your own efforts, they scan
properly and are generally pity and humorous.  Do not let me
discourage
you, however.  Keep trying!

Yours appreciatively,

Gilbert de la Swyve-Werring

Here are some submissions from a reader of this page (included with thanks):

STUBBORN RHYMES

In my book Words at Play:  Quips, Quirks & Oddities (Sterling
Publishing, 1997), I provided rhymes for the words ORANGE, PURPLE, and SILVER.
BLORENGE is the name of a 1,833-foot hill near Abergavenny, Wales;
HIRPLE is a British word meaning “walk lamely” or “hobble”; a CURPLE means
buttocks, or hindquarters, especially of a horse; CHILVER (British
dialect) means “ewe lamb” or “ewe mutton.”  It is also a surname, as
is WILVER, which was also the first name [forename] of baseball legend Willie
Stargell.

In celebration of these discoveries, I present this two-part
limerick.

ORANGE

There once was a dunce known as Orange
Who got his toe caught in a door hinge.
  Said he, turning purple,
  Proceeding to hirple,
“Now how will I get back to Blorenge?”

I resolved the story with a verse using the other difficult rhyme.

A passerby named Mr. Wilver,
Who traded his horse for a chilver,
  Offered Orange the lamb,
  But he mounted a ram
And rode home yelling, “Oh, Hiyo Silver!”

Other near-rhymes for “orange” include sporange, (sporangium), more
range, and far range.

It is said that there is no word in English that rhymes with MONTH,
but grunth, an alternate spelling of “granth,” rhymes perfectly in one of
its pronunciations.
I hope you can use something here.

Best,
O.V. Michaelsen (Ove Ofteness)

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