Dirty Limericks
eBook - ePub

Dirty Limericks

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eBook - ePub

Dirty Limericks

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Information

Publisher
Alma Classics
Year
2018
eBook ISBN
9780714546414
Print ISBN
9781847497093
Introduction
British ballads have come and more or less gone. The mark of these common songs and rhymes is that they address someone:
You married men whom Fate has assigned
To marry with them that are too much kind.
Or they may quote a higher authority:
Says my uncle, I pray you discover
What hath been the cause of your woes.
Or they may speak out for a group:
Six jolly wee miners, anā€™ miner lads are we.
Mostly these humble poems express dissatisfaction with one aspect or another of life. All rather similar to the blues which superseded them. In general, they are local complaints.
The limerick, that wily serpent, is written by a different kind of person. This person has no time for jolly wee miners and country lasses, unless they can be made to form the subject of a striking moral deficiency. The limerick writer is more sophisticated, and appears to be well travelled; he knows what is painted on a shutter in Calcutta, or what punishment the Bishop of Birmingham meted out, or the complications in the life of a prostitute in Rangoon, or the uses for clay in Bombay, and so on. He is a worldly person, generally a man, whose geographical knowledge extends throughout the British Empire. Indeed, the heyday of the limerick was very likely the heyday of the Empire, only a generation or two ago.
We imagine a sturdy District Commissioner, sitting on his veranda, chota peg by his side, sumĀ­ming up the misfortunes of a young girl from Madras in five succinct lines. No fool he. Immorality and perversions fail to shock him. Indeed, the more surreal they are, the better. They may take place in underground aviaries, in a rather dusty cave outside Belgrave, by a punt-fraught river near Buckingham, or in a crowd at Stroud.
Our connoisseur of the curious has to master an intricate rhyme scheme: AABBA. It is not a format for weaklings.
The first limerick I was told when a juvenile may have been composed by another juvenile. I quote it merely for antiquarian purposes:
There was a young lady from Riga
Who had an affair with a tiger.
The result of the fuck
Was a paralysed duck,
Two goats and a circumcised spider.
At the age of five, when I had been so recently the product of a gynaecological event myself, this even more unlikely outcome may have seemed amusing. But the folly of the putative bard went even deeper: the rhyme scheme does not work. ā€œSpiderā€ does not rhyme with either ā€œtigerā€ or ā€œRigaā€. The meĀ­nagerie as described is impossible. Better perhaps to concentrate on the parturition which followed the affair:
Poor girl! Her long labour
Was described by a neighbour
Like Frankenstein climbing the Eiger.
While this is not particularly good, rhyme receives better consideration. The amateur rhymester did not foresee, before setting out, that the only word to rhyme with ā€œtigerā€, apart from ā€œE...

Table of contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Editorā€™s Note
  3. Dirty Limericks
  4. Geographical
  5. I
  6. II
  7. III
  8. IV
  9. V
  10. VI
  11. VII
  12. VIII
  13. IX
  14. X
  15. XI
  16. XII
  17. XIII
  18. XIV
  19. XV
  20. XVI
  21. XVII
  22. XVIII
  23. XIX
  24. XX
  25. XXI
  26. XXII
  27. XXIII
  28. XXIV
  29. XXV
  30. XXVI
  31. XXVII
  32. XXVIII
  33. XXIX
  34. XXX
  35. XXXI
  36. XXXII
  37. XXXIII
  38. XXXIV
  39. Sexual
  40. I
  41. II
  42. III
  43. IV
  44. V
  45. VI
  46. VII
  47. VIII
  48. IX
  49. X
  50. XI
  51. XII
  52. XIII
  53. XIV
  54. XV
  55. XVI
  56. XVII
  57. XVIII
  58. XIX
  59. XX
  60. XXI
  61. XXII
  62. XXIII
  63. XXIV
  64. XXV
  65. XXVI
  66. XXVII
  67. XXVIII
  68. XXIX
  69. XXX
  70. XXXI
  71. XXXIII
  72. XXXIV
  73. XXXV
  74. XXXVI
  75. XXXVII
  76. XXXVIII
  77. Bestial
  78. I
  79. II
  80. III
  81. IV
  82. V
  83. VI
  84. VII
  85. VIII
  86. IX
  87. X
  88. XI
  89. XII
  90. XIII
  91. XIV
  92. XV
  93. XVI
  94. XVII
  95. XVIII
  96. XIX
  97. XX
  98. Lavatorial
  99. I
  100. II
  101. III
  102. IV
  103. V
  104. VI
  105. VII
  106. VIII
  107. IX
  108. X
  109. XI
  110. XII
  111. XIII
  112. XIV
  113. XV
  114. XVI
  115. XVII
  116. XVIII
  117. XIX
  118. XX
  119. Clerical and Institutional
  120. I
  121. II
  122. III
  123. IV
  124. V
  125. VI
  126. VII
  127. VIII
  128. IX
  129. X
  130. XI
  131. XII
  132. XIII
  133. XIV
  134. XV
  135. XVI
  136. XVII
  137. XVIII
  138. XIX
  139. XX
  140. Original
  141. I
  142. II
  143. III
  144. IV
  145. V
  146. VI
  147. VII
  148. VIII
  149. IX

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