I love =
limericks, though the humor of some can be bawdy at best. Here are old =
and new family-friendly limericks.
The =
5-line limerick used the now-familiar rhyming scheme of A-A-B-B-A, and =
metric beat of 3-3-2-2-3 in those rhyming lines.
Shakespeare employed a rough =
form of limerick in "Othello":
And let me the canakin =
clink, clink; (canakin =3D drinking can)
And let me the canakin clink =
A soldier’s a man;
A life’s but a span;
Why, then, let a =
soldier drink.
Mother Goose (1744) has the =
familiar Jack and Jill limerick, and this ditty you =
know:
Hickory dickory dock,
the =
mouse ran up the clock;
the clock struck one
and down he =
run;
hickory dickory dock.
Edward Lear (1846) has been =
called the "father" and the "poet laureate" of the =
limerick because he helped popularize the form:
There =
was a young lady of Niger
who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They =
returned from the ride
with the lady inside,
and the smile on the =
face of the tiger.
The =
earliest published American limerick appeared in 1902 in the Princeton =
Tiger:
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash =
in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a =
man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
The =
modern wit Ogden Nash penned better, more clever limericks, by far. I =
remember laughing in my school days at:
A flea =
and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said =
the fly, "let us flee!"
"Let us fly!" said the =
flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the =
flue.
The =
grif net blog humor you read here today resulted from my reading a =
modern (Oct 2018) limerick in Reader’s Digest and laughing out =
loud:
A forgetful old gasman named =
Dieter,
Who went poking around his gas =
heater,
Touched a leak with his light =
–
He blew out of sight =
–
And, as everyone who knows =
anything about limericks can tell you, he also ruined the =
meter.
~~
Dr Bob =
Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net =
"Jesus Knows Me, This I =
Love!"
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