Limericks
They're at least 250 years old, everyone knows what they are, but no one knows why we call them... limericks.

Form
A classic limerick consists of five lines, rhyming aabba, with the “a” lines having three “beats”, and the “b” lines having two. However, limericks have developed since Edward Lear’s days, and nowadays the last line is rarely similar to the first line. In fact, it normally contains the “punch line” or joke.

For example:

There was a young lady of Spain
Who was terribly sick in a train,
Not once, but again
And again and again,
And again and again and again

History
Limericks were originally called “nonsense verses”. Probably the first to be published was the children’s nursery rhyme “Hickere, Dickere Dock”. This first appeared in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, which was published in 1744:

Hickere, Dickere Dock,
A Mouse ran up the Clock,
The Clock Struck One,
The Mouse fell down,
And Hickere Dickere Dock.

The first book of nonsense verse was “The History of Sixteen Wonderful Women”, published in 1829.

Others followed, with Edward Lear publishing “A Book of Nonsense” in 1846, using the name “Derry Down Derry”. The book was re-printed in the 1860s under Lear’s own name, and suddenly limericks became very fashionable.

The English humorous magazine, Punch, then started a competition. Readers had to send in limericks about a named geographical location. Some writers have said this was how limericks got their name: because it was an impossible challenge to find a rhyme for the Irish town "Limerick".

The competition continued throughout the 1860s, but it is said that there were lots of hoax entries, and the entries became ruder and ruder, so Punch closed the competition.

It was another 40 years, though, before the name “limerick” was used to describe this kind of poem. The first mention was in 1896.

So if limericks existed before Lear, and were only named years later, why is Lear associated with them?

Most writers suggest two reasons. The first was because he tightened the “laws” of limerick writing, making the form more recognisable. The second was because of his artwork, which was very weird and original. Compare "Sixteen Wonderful Women" and his own work.

Interesting limerick sites:
Janet's Wordplay and Puzzle Site has some excellent limericks.
Here's one she quotes from Frank Richards

Said Wellington: "What's the location
Of this battle I've won for the nation?"
They replied, "Waterloo."
He said: "That'll do.
What a glorious name for a station".

For more about Lear and the limerick form, try:
http://edwardlear.tripod.com/index.html

Alien Limerick Generator.
A virtual machine that will send you a unique limerick in purest alien. Nonsense verse in nonsense!...

...and these two sites which go into great detail about the form of the perfect limerick:

http://www.sfu.ca/~finley/discussion.html
http://www.limericks.org/pentatette/whatis.htm

We’ll be looking in more detail at the limerick form later this month

If you would like some help and advice about how to read out limericks, or even to write them, read this article in our Magazine.

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