Everything you've ever wanted to know about Limericks but were afraid to ask! |
There was a young lady from france... What? Oh yeah, rated G. Hmmm. Let's give you a quote from my favorite source and THEN we'll get to the example... A rated G example, lol. Limericks - pronounced lim rik NOT lime rick :) **Limerick. The limerick may be the only traditional form in English not borrowed from the poetry of another language. Although the oldest forms are in French, the name is from Limerick, Ireland. John Ciardi suggests that the Irish Brigade, which served in France for most of the eighteenth century, might have taken the form to France or developed an English version of a French form. In either case the pattern is now wedded to the place. It is a five-line poem in which lines 1, 2, and 5 are anapestic trimeters and lines 3 and 4 are anapestic dimeters, rhymed as shown: ~~/ ~~/ ~~/ a ~~/ ~~/ ~~/ a ~~/ ~~/ b ~~/ ~~/ b ~~/ ~~/ ~~/ a Source: Page 72 of Patterns of Poetry - An Encyclopedia of Forms BY Miller Williams and Published BY Lousiana State University Press in 1986** Now for some examples of Limericks I found on Writing.Com:
And here are some on the WWW: http://www.snowcrest.net/lightind/bettyann/limericks2.html http://ravenelectrick.com/electricklimes/ http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/~munn/lim.html Now that you know ALL about limericks (okay so you know MORE about limericks) go on out there and write some! Check out this item for a chance to plug them!
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