The Limericks
Here are many of the limericks recited at the Feb. 3 Get to the Point! show. The main sources were Edward Lear’s Nonsense Books, the brilliant counterculture scholar Gershon Legman’s anthology The Limerick (which indexes and annotates 1700 prime examples of the artform) and numerous websites (to track down limericks by famous authors).
All these limericks are historical, and most were penned in the 20th century.
Discretion is advised. Dirty words and concepts abound. Like you didn’t know that about limericks.
It’s a hell of a situation up at Yale
It’s a hell of a situation up at Yale
It’s a hell of a situation
They are sunk in masturbation
For there ain’t no fornication up at Yale
Oh, the freshmen get no tail, up at Yale,
Oh, the freshmen get no tail, up at Yale
Oh, the freshmen get no tail
So it bang it on the rail,
It’s the asshole of creation up at Yale
There was a young student from Yale
Who was getting his first piece of tail
He shoved in his pole
But in the wrong hole
And a voice from beneath yelled “No sale!”
There once was a harlot at Yale
With her price-list tattooed on her tail,
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind,
She had it embroidered in Braille
There was a young fellow from Yale
Whose face was exceedingly pale
He spent his vacation
In self-masturbation
Because of the high price of tail.
There was a young man from New Haven
Who had an affair with a raven
He said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin,
“Nevermore!”
There was a young girl of Connecticut
Who didn’t care much about etiquette
Whenever she was able
She’d piss on the table
And mop off her cunt with her petticoat
There was a young fellow of Greenwich
Whose balls were all covered with spinach
He had such a tool
It was wound on a spool,
And he reeled it out inich by inich.
There was a man from Far Rockaway
Who could skizzle a broad from a block away.
Once while taking a fuck
Along came a truck
And knocked both his balls and his cock away.
Van Gogh found a whore who would lay
And accept a small painting as pay
“Vive l’Art,” cried Van Gogh,
“But it’s too fucking slow—
I wish I could paint ten a day!”
There once was a man of Sag Harbor
Who used to go with a fag barber
He gave some auditions
In many positions
And now he plays flute with Jan Garber.
“At a séance,” said a young man named Post,
“I was being sucked off by a ghost;
Someone switched on the lights
And there in gauze tights,
On his knees, was Tobias, my host.”
It’s a helluva fix that we’re in
When the geographical spread of the urge to sin
Causes juvenile delinquency
With increasing frequency
By the Army, the Navy and Errol Flynn.
To Italy went Sinclair Lewis
Documenting the life led by loose
American drunks,
But he unpacked his truncks
‘Cause Florence slipped him a goose.
The cross-eyed old painter McNeff
Was color-blind, palsied and dag.
When he asked to be touted
The critics all shouted:
“This is art, with a capital F!”
There was a young maid of Boston, Mass.,
Who stood in the water up to her… knees.
(If it doesn’t rhyme now,
It will when the tide comes in.)
There was an announcer named Herschel
Whose habits became controversial,
Because when out wooing
Whatever he was doing
At ten he’d insert his commercial.
“I’ll do it for Art—I’m no prude!”
He said, as he posed in the nude.
But on viewing his ass
The whole fairy class
Decided it ought to be screwed.
There was a young lady of Exter,
So pretty, that men craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.
There was a young fellow named Goody
Who claimed that he wouldn’t, but would he?
If he found himself nude
With a gal in the mood,
The question’s not woody but could he?
Another young man, from Beirut
Played a penis as one might a flute
Till he met a sad eunuch
Who lifted his tunic
And said, “Sir, my instrument’s mute.”
The intestines of Dante Rossetti
Were exceedingly fragile and petty
All he could eat
Was finely chopped meat,
And he could shit was spaghetti.
The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called a girl a most elegant creature
So she laid on her back
And, exposing her crack,
Said, “Fuck that, you old Sunday School Teacher!”
The modern cinematic emporium
Is by no means the merest sexorium
But a highly effectual
Heterosexual
Mutual masturbatorium
There was a young lady named Ames
Who would play at the jolliest games.
She was great fun to lay
For her rectum would play
Obbligatos, and call you bad names.
Regardez-vous Toulouse-lAutrec,
Though at first glance an ambulant wreck,
He could fuck once a week
A la maniere antique
And once in a while a la Grecque.
There once was a fellow McSweeny
Who spilled some gin on his weenie
Just to be couth
He added vermouth
Then slipped his girlfriend a martini
There once was a man Robin Hood
Who lived in a Knottingham wood
He learned how to f**k
from old Friar Tuck
And made Marion whenever he could
A pirate, history relates
Was scuffling with some of his mates
When he slipped on a cutlass
Which rendered him nutless
And practically useless on dates
There once was a plumber from Lee
Who was plumbing his girl by the sea
She said Stop your plumbing,
There’s somebody coming!
Said the plumber still plumbing… It’s me!
A right twisted wench from Caprees-ed
Orgasmed each time that she sneez-ed
To the druggist she went
And laid down her last cent
Said, “A barrel of snuff, if you pleas-ed.”
A randy marsupial named Reeves
Spent some time with the whores ‘tween their knees
When they’d asked him for money
He’d say “Listen honey
A koala eats bushes and leaves.”
Now down in the valley of Shneel
Lived a woman who loved to reveal
With her curtains well drawn
Standing bare as a fawn
She’d do this really neat trick with an eel
Now this right old man was a sick ‘un
He had a dozen hen ripe for the pickin’
He’d chase ’em around
With his trousers pulled down
And he’d say “Whatsa matter, you chicken?”
A new farmer’s helper named Kull
Accidentally was milking a bull
The farmer said, “Boy yer dumb,
You done milked the wrong one!”
Said the boy, “But me whole bucket’s full.”
Twas a crazy old man called O’Keef
Who caused local farmers much grief
To their cows he would run
Cut their legs off for fun
And say “Look, I’ve invented ground beef!”
There once was a man from Madrass
Whose balls were made out of brass
When he’d bang ’em together
They’d play stormy weather
And lightning would shoot out of his ass
There once was a man from Havana
Screwed a girl on a player piano
At the height of their fever
Her ass hit the lever
And Yes he has no banana…
There once was a man from East Kent
Whose tool was so long that it bent
To save her some trouble
He folded it double
And instead of coming…he went
There once was a man from Bonaire
Who was doing his wife on the stair
When the banister broke
He doubled his stroke
And finished her off in midair
A bear taking a dump asked a rabbit
“Does shit stick to your fur as a habit?”
“Of course not,” said the hare,
“It’s really quite rare!”
So the bear wiped his ass with the rabbit.
To his friend, Ned said, rather blue,
“My wife Edith just told me we’re through,
For she says I’m too fat.”
And his friend told him that,
“You can’t have your cake and Edith, too.”
There once was a man named Tristan
Whose beer that he ordered was pissed in
She said “I don’t think,”
As he spit out his drink,
“On the menu that this one was listed.”
Said a fool whose mind was quite miniscule
As his ignorance reached a new pinnacle
“I don’t believe in astrology
It’s my ideology
But I’m a Leo and Leo’s are cynical.
I had me a wench from East Broint
Who bade me her skin to anoint
The girl had arthritis
And so I decided
She wouldn’t mind one more stiff joint.
There once was a man from Leeds,
who swallowed a packet of seeds,
within half an hour,
his dick was a flower,
and his balls were all covered with weeds.
There was an old man of Thermopylae
Who never did anything properly
But they said, “If you choose
To boil eggs in your shoes
You shall no longer stay in Thermopylae.”
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
—Ogden Nash
Earliest published modern limerick, 1902:
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
…and the sequels:
But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.
Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,
Where he still held the cash as an asset;
But Nan and the man
Stole the money and ran,
And as for the bucket, Manhasset.
—from “Othello” by William Shakespeare
And let me the canakin clink, clink; (canakin = drinking can)
And let me the canakin clink
A soldier’s a man;
A life’s but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink.
By H.G. Wells:
Our novels get longa and longa
Their language gets stronga and stronga
There’s much to be said
For a life that is led
In illiterate places like Bonga
By W. H. Auden:
T. S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas
Crying, “What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill On the Floss?”
By Robert Louis Stevenson:
There was an old man of the Cape
Who made himself garments of crepe.
When asked, “Do they tear?”
He replied, “Here and there,
But they’re perfectly splendid for shape!”
By James Joyce:
I WOULD IN THAT SWEET BOSOM BE
There’s no place I’d more like to be
Than clutched to your size Double-D.
So keep me abreast
Of my turn at your chest
And I’ll write you a novel or three.
By Salman Rushdie
The marriage of poor Kim Kardashian
was krushed like a kar in a krashian.
her kris kried, not fair!
why kan’t I keep my share?
But kardashian fell klean outa fashian.
By Mark Twain:
A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he’d tho.
Men that he saw
Dumping dirt near his door
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.
Mark Twain
By James Joyce:
There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can’t see the Joe Miller. Can you?
By John Updike:
There was an old poop from Poughkeepsie,
Who tended, at night, to be tipsy.
Said he, ”My last steps
Aren’t propelled by just Schweppes!” –
That peppy old poop from Poughkeepsie.
By Spike Milligan:
A combustible woman from Thang
Exploded one day with a BANG!
The maid then rushed in
And said with a grin,
“Pardon me, madam — you rang?”
By Aldous Huxley:
My firm belief is, that Pisarro
Received education at Harrow –
This alone would suffice,
To account for his vice,
And his views superstitiously narrow.
By W.S. Gilbert:
There was an old man of St. Bees
Who was horribly stung by a wasp
When they said, “does it hurt?”
He replied, “no, it doesn’t –
It’s a good job it wasn’t a hornet”
James Joyce, appearing as a character in Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties:
Top o’the morning!- James Joyce!
I hope you allow me to voice
My regrets in advance
For coming on the off-chance-
B’jasus I hadn’t much choice!
By James Joyce:
There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can’t see the Joe Miller. Can you?
By Lewis Carroll:
His sister, called Lucy O’Finner,
Grew constantly thinner and thinner;
The reason was plain,
She slept out in the rain,
And was never allowed any dinner.