Lying abed last night I got to thinking about limericks; something I have not visited for quite some while. And of course I didn’t need to revisit WS Baring-Gould’s The Lure of the Limerick to be reminded that as an art form the limerick is both clever and bawdy – as well as being a peculiarly English art form, much older than it’s supposed inventor Edward Lear – viz:
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space which is quite economical
Though the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
The limerick’s an art for complex
Whose contents run chiefly to sex.
It’s famous for virgins
And masculine urgin’s
And vulgar erotic effects.
The thoughts of the rabbit on sex
Are seldom, if ever, complex
For a rabbit in need
Is a rabbit in deed
And does as a rabbit expects.
There once was a queer of Khartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room
And they argued all night
As to who had the right
To do what, and with which, and to whom.
And it’s all downhill from there!
Must buy a new copy of Baring-Gould; my cheap 1971 paperback has literally fallen apart.