Humour is not the first (or even the usual) thing I look for in poetry, but one particular type of poem has always tickled my fancy. It’s called the limerick, supposedly taking its name after a little village in Ireland, a five-line doggerel with an aabba rhyming scheme, and it can deal with any subject under the sun, so long as it is at least vaguely funny (some can be wickedly so). Here’s a sample of hundreds that I have enjoyed:
A woman who isn’t too stunning
Competes in marathon running.
She really enjoys
Being chased by the boys:
Is she sporting, or just quite cunning?
If you share the same kind of taste, send in your favourite limerick. Only, not too very naughty ones, please – we have to keep in mind that a lot of teenagers with clucky parents read this blog, and my daughter does, too!
A woman who isn’t too stunning
Competes in marathon running.
She really enjoys
Being chased by the boys:
Is she sporting, or just quite cunning?
If you share the same kind of taste, send in your favourite limerick. Only, not too very naughty ones, please – we have to keep in mind that a lot of teenagers with clucky parents read this blog, and my daughter does, too!
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13 comments:
Sir,
This blog (especially the poem)reminds me of Maugham's story that we have just read(The luncheon).In that story,the woman of forty is evidently being cunning for a short while,but cannot go on very far in the marathon.....well,what do you think?
with regards,
Soumallya Chattopadhyay
That was a fine limerick. My favorite till now goes like this..
A limerick fan from Australia
regarded his work as a failure:
his verses were fine
until the fourth line
?
A philosophical mind is that which can extract deep meaning from 'meaningless' stuff, this limerick is as simple as that, but an afterthought over it can fetch wonderful ideas about the way the world is progressing.
There are two other somewhat of the same genre, but they are not fit here, as you have said.
Love
Manoshij
Sir,
One thing I would want to ask you is that,why have you chosen the title of your new blog as your world of "WANTON" whimsy....looking up for this word in the dictionary,I found that the very word WANTON means something related to cruel and violent action,(and to some extent relates to harsh words)
But so far,I have not found anything cruel or harsh in you blogs.....so I am confused.
I will be glad if you tell me the reason for having chosen this word.
Yours faithfully
Soumallya Chattopadhyay
Oh, that's not the only meaning of the word, Soumallya! I have used it in the sense of lighthearted, unfocussed, slightly naughty ... which is the mood that I want to evoke in this blog. That, too, is a valid use of 'wanton'.
Thanks for asking. This sort of question always enthuses me: it shows that the reader has been exercising his brain (which is a not-too-frequent event these days!)
Ha-ha-ha. Nice one this one with a winking, blinking limerick. I don't know why I missed this post for the better part of the day.
I remember those two longish "colourful" paperback books filled with limericks (They were called 1000 limericks or something) that I must have borrowed at least half a dozen times when I was in school. I wonder whether they're still on one of your bookshelves somewhere.
I don't remember any/many of them but there was one about "A handsome man called Dave..." which wasn't a naughty one in the typical sense of a limerick but one which never failed to make me gurgle.
There was one poem there too in one of those limerick books, and it wasn't even a limerick (and I have no idea what it was doing there) but I'd heard it and learnt it when I was 5 or thereabouts, and was then rather delighted to have chanced upon a silly school poem that nobody else had heard about (or so I thought) so many years later.
That rather silly school poem (and it's sung with a sing-song voice while doing one of those double hand-clapping “stunts”) went:
We break up.
We break up.
We don't care if the school blows up.
No more English; no more French.
No more sitting on the old school bench.
If the teacher interferes,
Turn her around and tweak her ears,
If that doesn't serve her right
Blow her up with dynamite.
It's puerile I know, and it doesn't go well over here – but can you imagine I've never forgotten this poem and I'll remember it till the day I die – and it's probably the only poem I remember the whole way through and don't put in my own filler-words as I go along.
Here's a limerick that I can think of. Wonder what you'd make of it.
Yvonna Hummalot is a gleeful little nun.
Humming (songs) loudly - come snow, sleet or sun.
Her performances leave men mooning,
Boys are left swooning,
Some glum nuns now hum a lot for fun.
Sir,
Thank you for explaining the meaning.Now I have understood much better;your purpose of writing this blog.
We know that recently,the world(especially South Asia)has almost been wrapped with terrorrism.Most of it is happening in Pakistan.And eventually,almost all people are raising their fingers against the Muslims in general.I am sick of hearing constantly(though not in my house)that Muslims are ruthless,mindless,cruel and so on and so forth.....in nature.But frankly speaking,I do not think so.It is true that most of the terrorist activities are carried out by the Muslims,but it is also evident that the Mohammedan population is far larger than the Hindus.So it is not a rational way of thinking that all muslims are nasty and every Hindu is a perfect,harmless gentleman.I would therefore earnestly request you to please write your opinion regarding this matter(if you don't mind writing so)in one of your forthcoming blogs......I shall wait for your opinion.
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully
Soumallya Chattopadhyay
Immediately after i read this blog I googled on limericks. The result was that I came across a very interesting website by the name of www.poetry-online.org. This is one of the many example's
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!"
-Edward Lear
With regards Diptokirti Samajdar
Here are a couple...
An evil crone from Camelot had a cuckoo, cat and clock.
The poor cuckoo however was forever kept under a cinder block.
One day the block did break.
And the cuckoo indeed did wake.
"Peck her! Peck her! Peck her! Cried out the kitty and the clock.
The cruel crone in Cornwall (now) had a cuckoo-clock and cat.
All midnight long, she whacked them both with a burly, bumpy bat.
One day the cuckoo did peck her.
And the kitty indeed did poke her.
They both hid what remained o' her beneath a grassy 'n mossy mat.
If I could add my two-penny bit!
A friend of mine is called KTR by his friends. A true lover of the English language, he has a fanatic interest in English words and their roots. I have learned much from him. Here is something that I once wrote on him.
There was an old man called KTR,
He was neither a bania nor a chettier.
But he stacked up hordes,
Not of silver but words,
Ain't seen nobody whose vocab is greatier.
Here are a couple of them which i liked...
1]There was a young lady named Kite
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She left home one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
2]The incredible Wizard of Oz
Retired from his business becoz
due to up-to-date science,
To most of his clients,
He wasn't the Wizard he woz.
Both are courtesy www.poetry-online.org
Dear Sagnik,
Thanks for the comments. I do hope someone writes a proper reply to your comment on the previous blogpost really soon. But one small request: do tell me which Sagnik you are.
Heard this one?
Limericks are jokes anatomical
said in words economical
The good ones I've seen
Are so seldom clean
and the clean ones are so seldom comical.
And this one?
The limerick is furtive and mean;
You must keep her in quarantine.
Or else she'll sneak to a slum
And promptly become
Disorderly, drunk and obscene.
(These have been reproduced from my memory. As the 'sharpness' of my grey cells varies inversely as the number of grey strands on my head, I am not sure of their fidelity to the original.)
My favourite? There are three, all outstanding because of their 'cleverness':
'T is a favourite prooject of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
I would fix it at 3
For, it's easy, you see
Than 3.14159.
She frowned, 'Stop it, Mr.!'
Because, in sport, he kr.
And so, in spite,
That very night
This Mr. kr. sr.
The limerick, peculiar to English
Is a verse form hard to extinguish.
Once, Congress in session
Decreed its suppression,
But people got around that piece of legislation by writing the fifth line without rhyme or meter, like this.
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