(WHTM) May 12 is National Limerick Day, when we celebrate the puckish poetry that always seems to sound amusing, no matter how serious the subject matter.

So where did the limerick come from, when was the first Limerick composed, and why is a limerick called a limerick? These are all mysteries surrounded by guesses. Some suggest credit for the first limerick goes to Saint Augustine, who composed a short verse sometime in the 13th Century. It does fit the stress pattern and rhyme scheme of a limerick, but it’s in Latin, and I”m willing to bet he didn’t call it a limerick.

There are also some limericks in Shakespeare, hiding amongst all the iambic pentameter. But the person most responsible for putting limericks on the literary map was British artist and writer Edward Lear (1812-1888) whose Book of Nonsense, published in 1846, is full of them. As for the name “limerick” the best guess (and I emphasize guess) is that it comes from an Irish soldiers’ song from the 1700s, with the chorus “Will You Come Up to Limerick?”

So what are the ground rules for limericks? First, they must have five lines. Lines one, two, and five rhyme with each other, and have eight or nine syllables. Lines three and four rhyme with each other, and have five or six syllables. (Usually, lines three and four do not rhyme with lines one, two, and five.) The stresses in the lines are what is called an anapestic metric foot, meaning two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable:

  1. da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH,*
  2. da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH,
  3. da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH,
  4. da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH,
  5. da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH-da-da-DAH.
  • Lose the first “da” for eight and five-syllable lines.

Though it’s not a hard and fast rule, limericks often begin with “There once was a…” or “There was a…”

But enough of the literary history, let’s look at some examples, starting with the esteemed Mr. 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!”

For some reason, the word Nantucket frequently comes up in discussions of off-color limericks. So, in the interest of balance, I close this story with a limerick that contains the word Nantucket. but is quite inoffensive.

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket

His daughter, named Nan

Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.