You may have heard about “There once was a man from Nantucket”. Many limericks open with this line. Nantucket is the name of an island that creates puns and ribald rhythms.
Versions are obscene typically. The protagonist has been portrayed as hypersexualized and well-endowed in these versions. The opening line is very famous. It is used alone as a joke on different platforms of social media.
The joke shows upcoming immoralities in the line. You may have heard the different versions of the short song too. The lines are simple. One cannot repeat the version in a polite and decent company. Do you know about the history of this opening line?
Four limericks were reprinted and the first appeared on 14 June 1924. It appeared in a Nantucket newspaper’s edition. It started when Princeton Tiger resuscitated. The first limerick was printed at that time then the Chicago Tribune had answered it with another limerick that was the second one.
New York Exchange had taken the next step and published the third rhyme. After this, Pawtucket Times published the next versions of the limerick. Next to this, Yesterday’s Island motivated readers to not stop the saga.
There are several websites that allowed users to create their own latest chapters because of their interest in the limericks. The story begins in the following way.
Library often closes at 8:00 pm on Tuesday and the staff doesn’t leave before 8:30. They fold the newspaper present in the lobby, shelve the books, and balance the cash present in the drawers. The person was shelving a children’s books stack. The books were related to poetry.
The personal called the children’s librarian. He said “Hey Maryanne”. She replied from the kitchen where she was putting the plastic food into a bucket. The person said he is going to write an essay and this essay will be related to limericks.
She asked him “About limericks really”? He said yes and revealed that he doesn’t know any limerick that is not dirty. She laughed and suggested that he should check out A Book of Nonsense by Edwards Lear. She worked on composing a limerick that was unprepared.
She worked as a children’s librarian and most of the children’s librarians are patient, lovely, and knowledgeable. The limerick was adorable but it rhymed dog and blog. The recommendation of Maryanne’s seemed an ideal place to initiate researching about different limericks.
A Book of Nonsense of the Lear was published firstly in 1846. The book was reprinted in 1863. You can find a hundred above poems of five lines in the book. The book got extreme popularity. It inspired the magazine of British humor.
After this, the magazine started publishing different limericks. The English “limerick craze” started after publishing the limericks. People who were interested in the limericks held different contests related to limericks. One was a Punch run that was held in the 1860s.
It features the winners of the contest on the pages. The submitted limerick become erotic and the magazine had suspended that contest. Lear got the credit of creating a single stanza. He also invented the AABBA rhyme scheme.
The scheme justifies the limerick form. The little poems are present since the 11th century. An etymology blog worked to attribute the form of a limerick. The name of the blog is Haggard Hawks. The form was attributed to a prayer of the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas.
If you know about Shakespeare’s plays then you may know that limericks show up and the songs of drinking in these plays including The Tempest and Othello. Some nursery rhymes are famous still such as Little Miss Muffet and Hickory Dickory Dock.
These are limericks that were published at the starting of 1744. The limericks were published in the books named Mother Goose’s Melodies and Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book. Most people think that limericks are dirty.
Some myths are childlike about the limericks and these things are inherited. You can say that limericks’ origin is filthy. The term ‘limerick’ is taken from a drinking game that is old. It is famous among many British soldiers.
Drinker improvises various ribald songs. Each drinker tried to make a verse of five online. Then they combine the lines and it comes up to Limerick. The infamous limerick among all is “There was a man from Nantucket”.
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