I have been waiting a long time to write this installment. It was at the very beginning of this year that this topic started to come together, and I also collected some great limericks to go with it. First it was the write-up of the trip to Louisiana, then a discussion of the Southeastern United States. Before I knew it I was in Africa, then the essays on Switzerland filled the summer. Thus passeth the year. I am now on business in the Dominican Republic at our Eden Bay Resort for a time, then in Minneapolis on family business, before proceeding directly to the trip that covers the remaining region of the US, the Northwest, plus Hawaii. I’m just managing to squeeze in this installment before starting the discussion of Denver, the first stop.

The use of what we call in German Fachsprache, technical language within a field, is a killer of interest to outsiders, or as teachers discover in school, to learners. I wouldn’t dare announce right now that we’re going to discuss prosody. And actually that’s just as well, because we’re not. The term prosody covers everything in speech above and beyond the sounds themselves, in other words, the pitch you speak in, the melody of the sentence, and all sort of things that I, and presumably the reader, has little interest in. But we all easily understand this: da.DA That’s a stress pattern. And we all can count, including counting stress patterns. This counting of stress patterns is meter. This is all part of prosody as well, but is something that I’ve been referring to in translations as being particularly useful in discussing songs and poems. If you remember your English teacher talking about iambic pentameter, but are hazy as to just what it is, this is where we’ll look into it. And how about trochaic octameter? Anapestic dimeter? Dactylic hexameter? Piece o’ cake.

It’s all really quite simple, and easy to understand, especially if I do my best to cut back on all that Fachsprache, the killer of curiosity, and we’ll just stick to stress patterns and meter. But first I want to make a point I discovered in reviewing all of this.

It is possible—to my way of thinking, probable—that poetry may predate literacy. I’ve mentioned many times that linguists realize (other than the way that many lay people do) that language is that which is spoken. Long after people spoke, they figured out alphabetic codes to write down that speech for posterity. This “written language” is what we now call literacy, and advanced civilizations can’t do without it. But there are still small groups hidden away in jungles who never developed a writing system and are called pre-literate. How do they retain their history? The same way ALL civilizations did at one time, because language is oral, all civilizations were at one point pre-literate. Among the pre-literate, history is retained orally, and the best way to memorize is by rhythmic chanting. Or poetry. Or singing. Perhaps these three developed one from the other. We now consider songs or poems—even limericks—to be curiosities within language, but perhaps they are actually the original record-keeping, and thereby the precursors of written language, the only way to record events in very ancient times. In other words, constructing a sentence in a pattern such as iambic pentameter (five iambs, or da.DA da.DA da.DA da.DA da.DA) is an easier way to memorize that sentence. I now think that the concept boggles the mind, that the poetic form aids memorization and therefore, oral transmission historically.

This also goes for the fact that “there.ONCE.was a.MAN.from nan.TUCK.et” is easier to memorize in a pattern like this, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. On to stress patterns and meter, primarily as they’re found in everyday speech—that’s actually paramount here—and then also how that extends to poetry and song.

Stress Patterns   What we mean here we mentioned quickly in passing: da.DA is a stress pattern. We will now mention that it has a “scientific” name, but one that I reject as stupid. It can be called a “foot”, so that iambic pentameter can be said to have five “feet”. Use that if you will, but I reject it out of hand. To me, this is a stress pattern.

In identifying stress patterns, we count syllables, not words. One syllable doesn’t form a pattern, so let’s forget that. We shall find that two and three syllables are what we want, but let’s just look at four or more syllables for a moment. There certainly are patterns in mas.sa.CHU.setts (four syllables, third one stressed) or mi.a.mi.FLO.ri.da (six syllables, fourth one stressed), but these are too long and unwieldy to concern ourselves about. So let’s go back to the meat of the discussion, two and three syllables, which we can also call disyllables and trisyllables. You can stress the first of two syllables (F2) or the last of two (L2), so there are two possibilities. You can also stress first of three syllables (F3), the last of three (L3), or the middle of three (M3), so there are three possibilities. All told, we have five possibilities for stress patterns: F2, L2, F3, L3, M3. I will be using these symbols as a quick guide, but all patterns are also named, and we can’t avoid using the names as well. If your attention starts to stray, just remember that you can’t write a limerick without an amphribrach (M3), actually, thirteen of them, so keep focused.

F2: THE TROCHEE If you have two syllables with the first one stressed (DA.da) you have a trochee (TRO.kee) and the pattern is trochaic (tro.KAY.ik). Examples of trochees (F2): DIN.ner, LON.don, PLA.net, MOS.cow, PA.ris, HAP.py, KISS.me.

WIN.ston CHUR.chill had a trochaic name. With two trochees, his name is in trochaic dimeter. As it turns out, his middle name is also a trochee, WIN.ston SPEN.cer CHUR.chill, so his entire name is in trochaic trimeter.

Even outside of poetry, if stress patterns happen to fall evenly into a regular sentence, the effect is pleasing:

Each of these sentences happens to consist of just trochees. The first has five, the second seven, the address six, making them, in order, examples of trochaic pentameter, heptameter, and hexameter.

L2: THE IAMB If you have two syllables with the last one stressed (da.DA), you have an iamb (I.am) and the pattern is iambic (i.AM.bik). Examples of iambs (L2): in.SIST, come.HERE, de.TROIT, a.MUSE, be.COME, new.YORK, ber.LIN, to.DAY.

A fictitious name such as pau.LINE du.PONT is iambic, and the name is in iambic dimeter. If she were pau.LINE ma.RIE du.PONT, it would be in iambic trimeter.

Parents who name children often spend a lot of time trying to get the name alliterated, having the same sound at the beginning of each part (Tommy Tune). They rarely consider trying to align stress patterns instead, which can be just as attractive and/or distinctive, if not moreso: Peter Thomas Cooper. Of course, you can always try to do both: Terence Tyler Tillman, unless you feel that is gilding the lily.

These are sentences that happen to consist of iambs. Count how many each has.

Four in the first makes it iambic tetrameter; five in the second makes it iambic pentameter. We of course don’t always speak this way, but when we do, the result is particularly euphonic.

F3: THE DACTYL If you have three syllables with the first one stressed (DA.da.da) you have a dactyl (DAK.til) and the pattern is dactylic (dak.TIL.ik). Examples of dactyls (F3): STRAW.ber.ry, BUF.fa.lo, HOR.ri.ble, BU.da.pest, O.re.gon, FLO.ri.da, TO.ky.o, TALK.to.me, NO.bo.dy, BUR.gun.dy, RES.tau.rant, RUN.with.it, PA.ro.dy.

For totally dactylic names we have E.lea.nor ROO.se.velt, also VLA.di.mir NA.ba.kov, two dactyls making dactylic dimeter. These are also called double dactyls.

Sentences consisting of dactyls could be:

Four dactyls in the first: dactylic tetrameter; three in the second: dactylic trimeter.

L3: THE ANAPEST If you have three syllables with the last one stressed (da.da.DA) you have an anapest (A.na.pest) and the pattern is anapestic (a.na.PES.tik). Examples of anapests (L3): un.der.STAND, in.ter.RUPT, com.pre.HEND, new.ro.CHELLE, go.a.LONE.

Sentences made up of anapests:

There are, in order, four, three, and eight anapests, meaning they are, in order, in anapestic tetrameter, trimeter, and octameter.

M3: THE AMPHIBRACH If you have three syllables with the middle one stressed (da.DA.da) you have an amphibrach (AM.fi.brak) and the pattern is amphibrachic (am.fi.BRAK.ik). Examples of amphibrachs (M3): ex.PLO.sion, a.TONE.ment, to.RON.to, en.COUR.age, ne.BRAS.ka, i.LIKE.it, chi.CA.go, pa.LER.mo, van.COU.ver, go.TAKE.one.

Sentences made up of amphibrachs:

In order, four and eight amphibrachs; amphibrachic tetrameter and octameter. It should be noted that amphibrachs are not often included in summaries of stress patterns since it is very rare for a whole poem to consist of them. However, they are the fodder of limericks, which consist of nothing but amphibrachs: there.WAS.a young.GIRL.from. cre.MO.na.… And this is the route that we’ll be taking.

Meter   Meter is a reasonable name for counting the number of stress patterns in a group. The meaning of the word always involves measurement, which is why the meter is the basic unit of length in the metric system (and “metric” is based on “meter”). I have been devious enough to have sneaked in through the back door in the discussion of stress patterns all but one of the terms we’ll be mentioning in this section, so they’re already familiar. For the most part, if you know the difference between a pentagon, hexagon, heptagon and octagon, you have most of the prefixes, and the others are just as obvious. Let’s talk about pronouncing these terms.

Dimeter and trimeter stand out from the others because they’re stressed on the first syllable. In addition, these first syllables are pronounced just like the words “dim” and “trim”. All the other words are stressed on the connecting O or A. The only new word that hasn’t come up (because what it represents is not common) is monometer, pronounced mo.NO.me.ter. All the others are like pen.TA.me.ter.

We can give an illustration of all possibilities from one to eight stress patterns. This example uses iambs, so below we have Iambic…

Bumps in the Road   As we drive along the iambic highway (or trochaic, or whatever), not all is smooth. Language just doesn’t often happen in these pleasant patterns. That’s not a big problem in everyday speech, since we take what we can get. But in poetry (or song) the bumps in the road just have to be accepted—and disregarded. I’ll give just one genuine example here of this. These lines are the closing lines in Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening from 1922. After reading them, but before reading on, decide on what stress pattern and meter you see:

I see four iambs per line, so therefore iambic tetrameter, and I hope you found it simple to figure out. But now go find the bump in the road. Something is wrong somewhere. Try to find it.

The word “promises” is a natural dactyl (F3), and is pronounced PRO.mi.ses—and it doesn’t fit in to the stress pattern or meter. First, that does NOT stop this from being iambic tetrameter. It’s just a slightly imperfect iambic tetrameter. This happens all the time in regular speech, and in poetry as well. You can either pronounce the word naturally, in which case the meter is a little squeezed: but.I have.PRO mi.ses to.KEEP, which leaves three real iambs with two unstressed syllables (called a phyrric) in the middle of the line. This is no problem, since we just don’t worry about it. The other choice is to purposely mispronounce the word as an anapest: pro.mi.SES and then the rhythm is perfect: but.I have.PRO mi.SES to.KEEP. People usually choose to pronounce the word normally.

See how the person reading Frost on YouTube does it: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Incidents like this in the interior of lines are awkward, but we live with them. There are changes at the beginning of a line (the head) or the end of a line (the tail), and we don’t even notice them. It involves losing an unstressed syllable making the line headless or tailless, or adding one. Getting an early start at limerick style, note these two possible opening lines:

These are typical opening lines of limericks, but something is “wrong” with one of them, yet we don’t notice it. We expect three amphibracs (amphibracic trimeter), and look at what we get:

The first example is complete, while the second one is tailless—it’s missing its last unstressed syllable--but we don’t even notice it. These minor additions and subtractions end up fitting right in.

This light verse by Ogden Nash is well known:

We present this here for two reasons. First of all, we see one single trochee, so, as infrequent as it may be, we have an example of monometer, specifically trochaic monometer. But we also need to notice that each of the other three lines has an extra syllable at the beginning (the head), which helps the flow and doesn’t interrupt the monometer at all.

Poetic & Musical Illustrations   We have our stress patterns, our meter, and are aware of the irregularities that occur, so let’s look at some real examples in poetry and music. These selections are in chronological order from the 17C, 18C, and 19C, with Robert Frost (and Ogden Nash) above representing the 20C. As always, identify stress pattern and meter before looking at the answer. Let’s start with the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 of 1609:

Immediately we spot the most frequent pattern in English, and in Shakespeare, iambic pentameter. But even Shakespeare forces us into quandries. Having to stress “to” in the first line and “and” in the second is minor, but having to put TWO stresses on the dactyl TEM.per.ate and pronounce it TEM.per.ATE is really a little odd. Yet it all still works.

The great majority of the poems of Robert Herrick (1591-1674) cannot be dated, but we can generalize that his works are mid-17C. I want to cite two here. Both titles are not well known, but the opening lines are frequently cited. First is Upon His Departure Hence, dealing with his mortality:

These are just the first six of fifteen lines. Striking, of course, is their shortness. We have here perfect iambic monometer, with no extra syllables as in the Ogden Nash selection above.

As unfamiliar as Herrick’s other title is, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, so is his opening line very familiar:

Upon considering the first line, the second part of the title becomes very clear: make much of time! This is the same admonishment as Carpe diem!, the phrase often translated as Seize the day!, but much more accurately and meaningfully as Harvest the day! But the pattern is awkward to determine at first since the very first word is an irregularity. Mispronounce naturally trochaic “GA.ther” as iambic “ga.THER” and you will count four iambs for iambic tetrameter, but then you have to return to the normal pronunciation of the word to actually read the line. You will also note that the second and fourth lines are tailless, and that naturally disyllabic “flower” has to be shortened to monosyllabic “flow’r” to fit the meter.

[We need a digression on archaicisms. It’s fun to toss around the occasional “he speaketh” or “ thou goest” or “what say ye”, as long as you know what you’re doing. That famous first line above groups together, rather surprisingly, two different archaic words that the unwary will confuse very easily. They are not the same word, nor are they pronounced the same. In “while ye may” we have the familiar variation of “you”, whose story is fascinating, but for another time. This “ye” is pronounced as written. The story behind the other one starts with the fact that the two “TH” sounds, both in “think” and in “this”, had no equivalent in the Latin alphabet, so a letter was borrowed in Anglo-Saxon from the runic alphabet. The name of the letter is “thorn” and it looks like this in its capital form: Þ and like this in lower case: þ Actually, the name of this letter can be spelled þorn, and it is still used in the Icelandic alphabet for the first sound in “think”. Þorn was used in Old English and well into Middle English. Then some scribes (remember, most people were illiterate) started to alter þorn by cutting away its upper half, perhaps in an attempt to make it look like a flourish. In any case, þorn (Þ) started looking like a Y, and in time, Þ was generally replaced by Y. This change was helped by the fact that Gutenberg had instituted the printing revolution in the 1430’s (2005/17) and printers fonts being imported into England had the letter Y but not the letter Þ. Finally, the digraph TH grew in popularity, and became predominant, replacing both Þ, and Y used as Þ. Thus the sequence of spelling the very same word went from þe to ye to the; while the pronunciation remained the same. Also, while þ and y to represent it had died out in most words, it remained the longest in ye/the because it was such a common word. To this day, Þ survives in the form of Y in pseudo-archaic usages such as in the stock prefix “Ye Olde”. It is, then, frequently mistaken for the other “ye” and pronounced like it, instead of being pronounced “the”. And this brings us back to the first line of Herrick’s poem, which, rather surprisingly as I said, contains both words. So this line is written “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”; it is pronounced, for reasons just explained, “Gather the rosebuds while ye may”; and, avoiding both archaicisms, it may be modernized to “Gather the rosebuds while you may”. End of digression.]

Let’s now try some music by John Newton from 1779:

I find no irregularities in the way of dropped or added syllables, but the rhythm varies. The odd lines are iambic tetrameter and the even lines are iambic trimeter. This alternating length adds to the drama. Here Judy Collins sings on YouTube Amazing Grace

This is Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit from Saint Nicholas of 1822:

I see a sea of anapests. It’s anapestic tetrameter, with no irregularities in these two lines.

A particularly pleasant, even hypnotic, use of these rhythmic styles comes up in Poe’s The Raven of 1845, which we discussed earlier (2007/17). Again, decide what pattern we have before I mention it.

Surely this pattern adds to the eerie, other-worldliness of the piece. I see trochees, eight per line, so it’s trochaic octameter. Poe wanted it this way, still there seem to be mid-line breaks (caesuras), so you have a feeling of trochaic tetrameter, twice per line, but once in the sixth line. The two mid-line rhymes (dreary/weary, napping/tapping) add to this feeling, but octameter is obviously what Poe wanted. Still, to fit the meter, some minor curiosities come up. In the second line, the second trochee squeezes together the three syllables in “many a” to MAN.ya, as does the fourth trochee, where “curious” has to shorten to CUR.yus. In line three, “suddenly” has to get double stress in order to fit: SU.den.LY. Finally, all the b-rhyme lines, those ending in lore/door/more, are tailless, that is, the last trochee is missing its second (unstressed) syllable. Still, all this irregularities fit in and we don’t notice them. As a matter of fact, the tailless lines gain some emphasis at the end simply by being tailless.

I will also repeat my translation into German of this first verse of Der Rabe:

I’m repeating this as well to illustrate my contention that, while forcing translations to rhyme does more harm than good, fitting the translation carefully into the same stress pattern, in this case trochaic octameter, gets it much closer to the original. You may be able to tell that I needed to double-stress some words, but that I also made the exact same lines tailless as in the original.

Earlier this year (2008/4) we discussed rather extensively Longfellow’s 1847 Evangeline. And the pattern is what? And with what variation?

We have dactylic hexameter, and this line is tailless, lacking the final unstressed syllable of the last dactyl. I quote here only this first line, because in the lines after that Longfellow has variations galore which we don’t need to get into here. He is much more consistent in something he wrote eight years later. These are the opening lines of Longfellow’s 1855 Song of Hiawatha:

The epic poem taking place in Minnesota, the references in the first two lines are to Lake Superior. The perfect rhythm of these lines certainly evokes a Native American milieu. Hopefully you identified its trochaic tetrameter, and you can compare it to Poe above. Both selections are trochaic, but these tetrameter lines are exactly half the length of Poe’s octameter.

Finally, we move back to music and to 1879 when Gilbert and Sullivan wrote ,Pirates of Penzance. How could we leave out, when discussing stress patterns and meter, the most famous of the “patter songs”, the Major-General’s Song? It’s obviously called patter because of the stress pattern, and it’s worth quoting here the entire first verse:

While the nonsensical content of Major-General Stanley’s “knowledge” is priceless, what stress pattern and meter do you get? It should by now be an obvious iambic octameter, with absolutely no headless or tailless lines to interrupt the flow of patter. There are two words, though, you have to be careful about. We usually pronounce them in shortened form: “vegetable” as veg’table and theorem as the’rem. In order to make them fit into the patter they MUST be pronounced in their full form, as ve.ge.ta.ble and the.o.rem.

And one last fun point: in all these lines of iambic octameter, the very first iamb is just that: I am.

Here in the Delacorte Theater in Central Park Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline give way to a tour de force: George Rose’s marvelous comic rendition of The Major-General’s Song Just listen to that iambic octameter go pattering along. Don’t miss the speed-up encore at the end.

Taboo Words   All languages develop for themselves a set of words that are put aside as special. Perhaps the origin of this was religious in nature, where the name of a god wasn’t allowed to be spoken. Beyond that, other words get set aside, primarily words of a sexual or excretory nature. Why those? Probably because those activities are done in privacy, so expressing them openly gives a feeling of the forbidden. All these words are referred to by linguists as taboo words.

Taboo words of a sexual or excretory nature are referred to by lay people as “dirty words”, a term that in itself speaks volumes as to how people regard them and their use. However, they have a valid use in language. Because of their taboo nature, when expressed in anger they help release tension on the part of the speaker. Sometimes they are used to intimidate. On the other hand, an overuse of such terms is part of male bonding among certain groups, giving rise to terms like “barracks language” and “cursing like a sailor”. Another category of taboo words is ethnic slurs.

Which words in a language become taboo varies between languages. There are words that can be used in common Russian sentences that would raise eyebrows considerably in other languages. But it’s important to understand that taboo words also vary within a language, where taboo words come and go. Today numerous words are heard on American television that would have been unheard of (and unheard) years ago. Then all the words in question would have been bleeped out, while today only a certain few ones are.

We should give an illustration of the transitory nature of taboo words migrating between being taboo and being perfectly normal. I have an example that shows a change from normal to taboo and back to normal. Plan on being surprised at this being a “dirty word”.

While the word “leg” had been a perfectly normal word, during the Victorian period it became taboo. This was the time of skirts reaching the floor, and seeing a woman’s ankle as she stepped into a carriage was cause for great excitement. Yet “ankle” didn’t become taboo, “leg” did, maybe because of where it reached at the other end. When a word becomes taboo, what it describes needs to be replaced with a filler word, a euphemism, and in this case “leg” was replaced with “limb”, as in “she fell and hurt her left limb”. Those of us with logical minds will say that “limb” can refer to arms as well as legs. That’s true, but in this period, for all practical (and polite) purposes, people had two arms and two limbs.

They say that people are funny, as evidenced by the fact that in that period, people even started talking about the “limbs” of a grand piano: “The wood is chipped on the back limb!” I also have heard that some people fitted piano legs with decorative leggings, to fit their sense of decorum. I never heard of there being any trouble with table legs, though. Yet, in the 20C, skirt lengths started to rise, and “leg” returned to normalcy, so that a “dirty” word became re-sanitized.

Limericks   We now come to the center of this presentation, Limericks. It’s a form of poetry unique to English (although we’ll try to remedy that). Limericks have survived the test of time, since variants have been found going back to the 14C. As the name implies, there is evidence that they started in the pubs of Limerick, Ireland, and were popular there, and later elsewhere in the English-speaking world, from the 14C to this day.

In researching the subject online, I found one website on limericks that started out its presentation in a clever way, which I’d like to describe. It shows a two-panel comic strip with an over-cute girl talking to an over-cute boy, who is sitting behind a huge volume labeled “Poetry” that almost obscures him from view. In the first panel she asks “What’s that you’re reading?”, to which he says “A book of poetry I got for Christmas”. Then there’s a pause until in the second panel he says “Here’s a funny one about a guy from Nantucket…”.

This comic strip is enjoyable for a number of reasons. First, it mixes together the concept of poetry, which tends to be high-brow, with limericks, which tend to be low-brow. It refers to the classic place-name for limericks, Nantucket. It points out that the poem is funny, which by definition limericks are, but that humor tends to be bawdy, so this juxtaposition of children reading limericks affords an extra surprise.

Few genres of poetry are as rigid as this in format. Haikus would be another example, having a rigid format of 17 syllables in a given pattern, and the subject matter of a haiku is always the beauty of nature. Limericks also have a rigid structure, and they are always funny. If they don’t have the correct structure and aren’t funny (or at least meant to be), they aren’t limericks.

RECIPE FOR A LIMERICK QUICHE: Take thirteen freshly-rinsed amphibrachs and pat dry. Lay on a cookie sheet in five rows of three each, except that the third and fourth rows will be short, with only two each. At the end of a row tailless amphibrachs are acceptable, and even common. Fill these amphibrachs richly with an egg mixture heavy on humor, spicing the mixture to taste with peppers from bell to jalapeño to fiery Naga Jolokia. Bake until the humor is of a jovial consistency, but be careful, since half-baked limericks are no fun at all.

STRUCTURE Before we get to other restrictions, let’s look at that format. Remember that an amphibrach is M3, three syllables, middle one stressed: da.DA.da. Stringing amphibrachs together will sound so limerick-like, it would be hard to seriously try to put many of them in another type of poem. The first, second, and fifth lines consist of three amphibrachs each, and will rhyme. The first line will always look something like:

That line has its tail, in other words, all nine syllables you’d expect with three amphibrachs, and the second and fifth lines will follow suit. On the other hand, you might have:

and the tail, the final unstressed syllable, will be missing, leaving only eight syllables. This is perfectly normal, and happens all the time—people don’t even notice the difference. And, lines two and five will again follow this shortened pattern.

The third and fourth lines consist of two amphibrachs each, and will also rhyme. They can be complete:

or tailless:

Finally, as to taillessness, there are varying patterns between the three and two lines, which gives a varying flavor to different limericks. Also, there are occasional syllables added at the head of lines.

The first line of a limerick is also immediately recognizable because of subject matter: it introduces a person and a place (see Fiji above). There is another subset that introduces a person and their name (there.ONCE.was / a.WO.man / named.DON.na). I’ve avoided these latter ones, because I strongly prefer the place name style—and also, this is a travel website. Furthermore, the place names, typically, tend to be very exotic, and often unusual. Also, to fit the amphibrachs, ordinary speech patterns often come out distorted, stressing words you wouldn’t stress if it were a regular sentence: there.WAS.a

HUMOR If it’s not funny, it isn’t a limerick. But there’s more to it than that. Possibly because of the pub origin of the form, although many limericks are innocuous and funny, most of them, some would say the best of them, are funny because they’re bawdy, ribald, suggestive, spicy, racy, risqué. Some limericks, as do some jokes, deal with bathroom humor, which I’ve never considered funny and which remind me of seventh-grade boys giggling in a corner of the schoolyard. Bathroom humor to most of us is indeed “dirty”, “obscene”, “indecent”. But when it comes to jokes about human sexuality, to bluenoses we say “Get a life!”

Also, when it comes to taboo words, we can look at them on two levels. Most frequently, as lay people, we see them subjectively, and are jolted by their use. However, linguists look at any taboo word objectively, being fully aware that many of them come and go, and are an integral part of language and worthy of review and study.

In researching limericks, I came across some facts that opened my eyes, and that on reflection are probably accurate. Although everyone appreciates a good limerick, the research specifically said that exchanging limericks is almost exclusively the province of comparatively well-educated males. The protagonist is typically portrayed as a well-endowed, hypersexualized persona. This protagonist is usually male, but frequently female, who, though, is usually seen through macho eyes. It is a context of men being naughty together, resulting in male self-glorification. Are penises really EVER that large? And so we move into the surreal situations of some limericks.

But the most startling point to me that came up in the literature is to me undoubtedly also true. In all the macho barracks and locker-room humor in limericks there is an inherently homoerotic strain, which appears under a heterosexual guise. This is similar to the homoeroticism, for instance, of fraternity initiations, where supposedly heterosexual males take undue interest in paddling other male backsides—and other activities that can be even more homoerotic than that.

And so there’s a lot more in limericks than at first meets the eye.

I have reviewed many limericks online and have found a group of favorites. Just as everyone edits jokes—and recipes—they hear, no limerick is in stone, and in some cases I’ve edited them to improve them, either involving adding or deleting extra syllables, or perhaps some words used. I always tried to improve weak spots where I perceived them.

Using the metaphor of peppers (2008/3) we will start with innocuous bell peppers, move up through pimentos and poblanos into the spicier jalapeños and tabasco or Cayenne peppers, then reach the fiery habanero, and finally come to the off-the chart Naga Jolokia. Fasten your seat belts.

ANY READER WHO DOES NOT APPRECIATE HUMOR DEALING WITH HUMAN SEXUALITY, OR WHOSE EYE IS OFFENDED BY THE SIGHT OF TABOO WORDS IN WRITING, PLEASE STOP READING NOW.

I am also aware that such caveats will egg most people on all the more.

The Travelanguist Limerick Collection   There is something about the name of the beautiful Massachusetts island of Nantucket that has made it the poster child of limerick place names, as seen in the comic strip mentioned above. It’s probably because the word lends itself so easily to humorous rhymes (use your imagination) and puns. It seems to me someone should build a monument to the limerick art form right on Nantucket harbor, don’t you think? And then a corresponding one across the Atlantic in the west of Ireland in Limerick, right?

We’ll start with limericks that have the spice of a modest bell pepper, in other words, none. There was a flare-up of interest in limericks in 1924 when this one became very popular.

This limerick was so popular, and may have even been the kick-off for Nantucket to gain limerick stardom, that newspapers had challenges to submit sequels. This sequel came in to the Chicago Tribune and was published:

Finally, this appeared in a paper in New York:

So the narrative moves down the US east coast from Nantucket in Massachusetts to Pawtucket in neighboring Rhode Island just north of Providence, to Manhasset on Long Island in New York State. These three limericks illustrate a technique that was more popular once but that is extremely difficult to write. The place names mentioned at the end of the first line are not only repeated at the end of the last line—itself quite unusual—but form a pun based on the whole narrative as well. This is an excellent trilogy of limericks.

Now a step up in spice to pimentos:

This last one is a cute comment on one of the minor annoyances of the human condition. There’s really nothing bawdy about it.

This is a comment on naïveté, compounded with quite a surreal image. Let’s move up into poblano peppers:

This is a joke on the reader, who is led down the garden path with the wrong image from what was “really” meant—heh, heh.

How the words fit the meter of the last line is particularly enjoyable. The rewrite I did on this was to change into a place name what had been a family name. It had been worded as “a couple named Kelly”. This next one has a similar theme:

Again, a surreal image. Spicier are jalapeño peppers:

This is sophisticated, saying what it does without being specific. It is particularly of interest how rhymes are made with the name Exeter.

Again, naïveté, but this time it’s youthful. We move up to tabasco or Cayenne peppers:

I had to rework the original of this last one quite a bit to get it to fit the rhythm better.

Surreal to the core. Again here, how the words fit the meter of the last line adds a lot to the enjoyment of the piece. Really fiery are habanero peppers:

This next one had been my favorite limerick for many years:

Other than the Bach flutist above, it can hardly get more surreal than this. I remember clearly when a certain math teacher at my school, shortly after I started teaching, came into the faculty room, told this limerick—there may just have been guys present--and had everyone rolling on the floor. This incident came to mind when I read that limericks are essentially the province of “comparatively well-educated males”.

As soon as I came across this limerick in recent months it immediately supplanted the previous one to become my favorite. It is sophisticated enough to say things without saying them, principally, that the plumber was “plumbing”. You cannot help but getting involved in the human condition of this plumber on the cusp. The cleverest device here is what I would call a double punch line. Obviously, the last two words are the primary punch line, but right before we hear that he is “still plumbing”, a very clever build-up to the end. (Is there some unintentional humor in what I just said?) I made one improvement that I like to this limerick, since the last line originally started “Said the plumber”, but my word adds to the drama of the moment, I feel.

Finally, up to the spice level of the Naga Jolokia pepper. And to do this, we return full circle to where we started, to the isle of Nantucket:

Spicy enough to curl your hair, but so goes the variety of limericks.

Original Limericks   Stepping way down from the highest levels of spice, it struck me that I should try my hand at it, and make it autobiographical to boot. I put this together last winter while still in Florida:

I worked long and heard to find rhymes with “New York”, but to no avail, so Manhattan was a valid substitute. Although taillessness is of no particular virtue, since tailless lines work just fine, I did manage to achieve taillessness. However, I still had to add an extra syllable to start line two (“Would”) and line five (“On”).

More recently, in the spirit of lines like “Old golfers never die …” I felt I wanted a limerick that commented on one’s activities or one’s profession. I also wanted just a little more spice, and came up with this result:

A Start on Non-English Limericks   Just because limericks aren’t a tradition in other languages doesn’t mean that we can’t try to write any in those languages. I’ve only done one, in German, and have left only potential starts in others, where I’m less comfortable trying to do any more.

Just as University shortens to “U” in English, Universität shortens to “Uni” in German. Since Beethoven was born in Bonn, the university there is the Ludwig-van-Beethoven-Universität. FKK stands for “Freie Körper Kultur” (Free Body Culture) and is the standard designation for nudist facilities, such as a beach, not only in the German-speaking area, but also elsewhere, just as the English designation WC (for Water Closet) is used internationally for toilet facilities. Not only won’t I attempt to rhyme this in translation, I won’t even fit it to meter. This is just to illustrate what it’s about: A student from the U in Bonn / Was sleeping on a nude beach in the sun. / It burned him so badly-- / His butt turned bright red -- / That afterward he crept away in pain. But judge the original, not this meager translation.

Here are first-line starts in other languages. The purpose is to show that at least first lines work in the limerick pattern in many languages.