The Lure of the Limerick

‘There once was an artist named Lear. . .‘

Edward Lear, ‘The Poet Laureate of the Limerick’, was born in Highgate in England on the 12th of May 1812, the youngest of a family of twenty-one children.  He died on January 29th, 1888, at San Remo on the Italian Riviera, where he had lived for the last eighteen of his seventy six years.

At the early age of fifteen, Lear was earning his living as a commercial artist, mostly by illustrating the writings of others.  Some paintings of birds Lear had made for the ornithologist John Gould attracted the attention of Edward Stanle, the thirteenth Earl of Derby, who wanted an artist to make the pictures for a book he was thinking of writing about the menagerie which was the show-place of the Earl’s estate at Knowsley near Liverpool. Edward was to work for no less than four successive Earl's of Derby.  Far more importantly however, he was to spend much of his leisure time amusing the grandchildren, nephews and nieces of the thirteenth Earl; to whom his first Book of Nonsense (1846) was dedicated. 

Lear never pretended to have invented the rhyme scheme we now call the limerick, nor did he ever use the word ‘limerick’.  Lear did however write 212 limericks in all.  He also did something unusual in that he wrote multi-verse limerick-form poetry.

Here is Edward Lear's own self-portrait –

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough.

His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig:

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
Leastways if you reckon two thumbs
Long ago he was one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.

He sits. in a beautiful parlour;
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of Marsala, -
But he never gets tipsy at all.

He has many friends, laymen and clerical
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.

When he walks in a waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, ‘He’s come out in his nightgown,
that crazy old Englishman, oh!’

 He weeps by the side of the ocean,
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill.

 He reads but he cannot speak Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear !

 Now here are some of Lear's classics.

 There was a Young Lady from Norway
Who casually sat in a doorway;
When the door squeezed her flat,
She exclaimed, ‘What of that’?’
This courageous Young Lady of Norway.

There was an Old Man of Cape Horn,
Who wished he had never been born;
So he sat on a chair,
Till he died of despair,
That dolorous Man of Cape Horn.

There was an Old Man of Dundee,
Who frequented the top of a tree;
When disturbed by the crows,
He abruptly arose,
And exclaimed, ‘I’ll return to Dundee!’

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who sat on a horse when he reared;
But they said, ‘Never mind!
You will fall off behind,
You propitious Old Man with a beard !’

The poetic form itself is actually very old. This one was apparently written by Queen Elizabeth 1.

The daughter of debate
Who discord aye doth sow,
Hath reaped no gain’
Where former reign
Hath taught still peace to grow.

Slanderous Satire

Many limericks were written as Slanderous Satire or to maliciously lampoon other people. (Enemies).  Apparently it became so bad that the poetic form was banned, or so this next limerick suggests.

The limerick, peculiar to English,
Is a verse form that's hard to extinguish.
Once Congress in session
Decreed its suppression
But people got around it by writing the last line without any rhyme or meter.

As in

There was a fat lady from Eye
Who felt she was likely to die,
But for fear that once dead
She would not be will-fed,
 She gulped down a pig, a cow, a sheep, twelve buns, a seven-layer cake,  four cups of coffee, and a green apple pie.

Limerick with tag

Author Norman Douglas, added a tag couplet that thought would make them more amusing.

There was a young fellow named Skinner
Who took a young lady to dinner
At half past nine
They sat  down to dine
And by quarter to ten it was in her.

What dinner?
No Skinner!

Finally, the only two limericks I could find about Australia.

There was a young man from Australia Who painted his arse like a dahlia
The colour was fine,
Likewise the design
The aroma, Ah that was a failure.

There was a young lady from Australia
Who went to a dance in a dahlia
As the petals unfurled
She revealed to the world
That the dailhia as a dress was a failure.