LIMERICK POEMS

Fellow Mensan and expert puzzler, Richard Lederer, wrote a humorous and informative article about limericks  for the Mensa Bulletin of August 2021.

Limericks are purely English poems that usually make one laugh.  Wikipedia indicates that Limericks  have "five line, predominantly anapestic (two short syllables followed by a long one) trimeter  with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA..."

Lederer adds that "a limerick is a nonsense poem..."

PELICAN

When I was a kid, we liked to recite the classic "Pelican Limerick" like this:

"A curious bird is the pelican

It's beak holds more than his belly can,

He can store in his beak

Enough food for a week

And I don't know the devil he does it!"

Lederer's version is much better:

"A wonderful bird is the pelican

His beak will hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Enough food for a week

But I'm damned if I see how the helican!"

NAUGHTY LIMERICKS

Around the fourth grade I began to hear several limericks that we wouldn't want our parents to hear us recite, but which caused us kids to roar with delight. Such as: (first line only, please)

"There was a young man from Nantucket"

CHRISTMAS LIMERICK CONTEST

In that August 2021 Mensa Bulletin issue, Richard proposed a limerick contest with the winning entry to be published in the Christmas-time issue. He didn't expect all the great limericks that he would receive.

I enjoyed reading the winning entries in the Bulletin.  I don't think it would be appropriate to mention any of them, but I'm sure that Richard wouldn't mind me showing his own Christmas limerick.  

"I hope it won't come as a shock

That Christmas I hazard to mock

It's the one time that we

Sit around a dead tree

Eating candy right out of a sock."

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Go, and enjoy the cooler weather.