LIMERICKS. The origin of this very popular type of nonsense-verse is lost in obscurity, and recent research work has done little to pierce the gloom. Nor is it known for what reason the name "Limerick" is attached to it. The theory that the title derives from the chorus "Will you come up to Limerick?" sung after impromptu verses composed at convivial parties, helps us not at all, since there is no record of this kind of verse being used at such parties. Rather is the limerick a kind of ribald epigram, passed on by word of mouth, and more often whispered than sung.
Langford Reed, the only collector of limericks who has toiled valiantly with their history, suggests that "this peculiar form of verse was brought direct to Limerick by the returned veterans of the Irish Brigade, who were attached to the French army for a period of nearly ioo years from 1691." The brigade was organ ized in Limerick, and when disbanded was no doubt responsible for giving currency to many rude barrack-room songs ; but the evidence of a French origin for the five-lined metrical scheme of the limerick rests upon very feeble foundations. Langford Reed quotes from Boswell's Life of Johnson: On s'etonne ici que Caliste Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste ; Puisque cette jeune beaute Ote a chacun sa liberte N'est-ce pas une Janseniste? epigram in The Menagiana (1716) on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade dressed as a Jesuit during the fierce contentions of the followers of Molinos and Jansenius. But Reed also quotes : Digerie, Digerie, Doge, La souris ascend l'horloge; L'horloge frappe La souris s'echappe, Digerie, Digerie, Doge, and appears to consider this a true limerick form, thus permit ting the verse-form almost as wide a license in metre as it has latterly attained in morals.
It may be sufficient to suppose that the limerick satisfies some natural instinct of the ear in rhymed verse, the prefatory couplet demanding a third line as complement, and staving this off, for the sake of surer effect, by the interposed short lines. But this would not account for the famous limericks of Edward Lear, in his Book of Nonsense (1846), where the last line is merely a choric repetition, employing one of the previous rhymes, and add ing little or nothing to the sense. In spite of this defect, Lear certainly gave to what is now known as the limerick its modern popularity—some even assert that "learick" is the proper form of the word—and established at once its insistence on topography and its attention to varieties of personal behaviour.
There was a young girl of Majorca Whose aunt was a very fast walker ; She walked sixty miles And leaped fifteen stiles, Which astonished that girl of Majorca.
Or again, There was an old person of Anerly Whose conduct was strange and unmannerly: He rushed down the Strand With a pig in each hand, But returned in the evening to Anerly.
Lear, however, did previsage the now usually accepted formula: There was an old man at the Cape Who made himself garments of crape ; When asked "Will they tear?" He replied "Here and there, But they keep such a beautiful shape !" Limericks have been composed upon every conceivable topic, not excluding philosophy and religion— There was a young man who said "Damn ! It is borne upon me that I am An engine which moves In predestinate grooves, I'm not even a bus; I'm a tram !" but their usual themes became similar to those of the epigrams of Martial, and would doubtless so have remained, milder variants being substituted when blushes were to be spared, had it not been for their sudden vogue at the beginning of the present century as a subject for prize competitions in the newspapers, which gave large sums of money to readers for supplying the cleverest last line. The judges in these competitions must have had poor ears for scarcely any of the winning lines contained the correct number of feet. A good limerick should have the consecutive fluency of conversational prose, the metre remaining faultlessly dactylic throughout. No better example can be given than There was an old man of Khartoum Who kept two tame sheep in his room: "For," he said, "they remind me Of one left behind me, But I cannot remember of whom." Fantastic rhyme schemes to the limerick are innumerable. As for instance, The lifeboat that's kept at Torquay Is intended to float in the suay: The crew and the coxswain Are sturdy as oxswain, And as smart and as brave as can buay.
Limericks have been translated into all languages, and the globe has been ransacked for rhymable towns. The best verses contain the largest amount of improbable incident or of subtle innuendo that can be crowded into the available space, and they may be regarded as the fixed English form for light or indelicate epigram matic satire, as opposed to the ordinary rhyming quatrains which are used on more dignified occasions. (E. V. K.)