Limericks

One of my favourite limericks is this one:

There was a young man from Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When asked why that was,
He replied "It's because
I always try to cram as many words into the last line as I possibly can.

Edward Lear wrote limericks as did many other upstanding authors but many believed that the only good limerick was a dirty one.

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean 
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.[4]


Someone with the wonderful name of Gershon Legman wrote a couple of volumes of limericks in the 1950s which scandalised American society and I like the warning from Professor Morris Bishop:

The Limerick is furtive and mean
You must keep her in close quarantine
Or she sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk and obscene.
 

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