50 Fun Facts About Limericks

How many lines does a standard limerick have?

The first, second and last lines carry three beats each; the two short middle lines carry two.

What is the rhyme scheme of a limerick?

Lines one, two and five share one rhyme; the shorter lines three and four share another.

What is the da-da-DUM foot of limericks, two unstressed syllables then a stressed one, called?

The same rolling foot drives 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' and Byron's 'The Destruction of Sennacherib'.

According to the classic pattern, what does the first line of a limerick traditionally introduce?

The place name lands at the end of the line and sets the rhyme that lines two and five must match, which is why exotic towns are so popular.

In early limericks, the last line was typically what?

Lear's verses often end almost where they began, so the humour lies in the circular nonsense rather than in a punchline.

The limerick as a verse form first appeared in England in which century?

It was Edward Lear, more than a century later, who made it famous, though the word itself was not printed until 1880.

The name of the verse form is generally taken to refer to a city and county in which country?

One theory ties it to a parlour game whose refrain asked whether you would come up to Limerick.

The earliest documented use of 'limerick' for the verse, in 1880, appeared in a newspaper in which Canadian city?

The New English Dictionary had recorded the first English usage as 1898 and the first American as 1902 before the New Brunswick reference turned up.

Which folklorist's huge limerick anthology argued the true folk form is always obscene?

His first volume, published in Paris in 1953, gathered more than 1,700 of them; a sequel added 2,750 more.

The compiler of the biggest limerick anthology, Gershon Legman, was also a founder of which craft's modern movement?

He organised an exhibition of Akira Yoshizawa's paper folding at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum in 1955.

Which writer popularised the limerick in the 19th century, though he never used the term?

He was primarily a painter and illustrator, and thought of his verses simply as nonsenses.

In what year did Edward Lear publish A Book of Nonsense?

It went through three editions, with the verses typeset in two, five and three lines respectively to fit under the pictures.

How many limericks did Edward Lear write in total?

Almost all of them are nonsense literature, each accompanied by an absurd drawing of the same subject.

Edward Lear was born in 1812 in Holloway, in which city?

His birthplace is now marked by a plaque at Bowman's Mews in Islington.

Edward Lear was the second-youngest of how many children?

His father was a stockbroker; his much older sister Ann largely raised him.

From the age of six, Edward Lear suffered frequent seizures caused by which condition?

He felt lifelong shame about it and could usually sense an attack coming in time to leave the room.

Edward Lear's first published work, at age 19, was a set of illustrations of which birds?

He was the first major bird artist to draw living birds rather than skins, working for the Zoological Society.

From 1832 to 1836 Lear was employed drawing the private menagerie of which aristocrat at Knowsley Hall?

A rumour later claimed the Earl secretly wrote the nonsense books, on the evidence that both men were named Edward and Lear is an anagram of Earl.

Which invented adjective from 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' is now in many dictionaries?

The other three are all Lewis Carroll coinages from 'Jabberwocky'.

'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' was first published in 1870 in a magazine from which country?

It appeared in Our Young Folks before Lear collected it in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets the following year.

What was the name of Edward Lear's beloved stumpy-tailed tabby cat?

Servants had docked his tail to stop him wandering, and Lear is said to have designed his new villa on the old floor plan so as not to confuse him.

Edward Lear spent his last years and died at a villa in which Italian Riviera town?

He named the house Villa Tennyson and is buried in the town's Foce cemetery.

Lear composed musical settings of poems by which poet laureate, the only settings that poet approved of?

He published twelve of them, and lines from the poet's 'To E.L.' are carved on Lear's headstone.

Which American humorist wrote the 1910 limerick beginning 'A wonderful bird is the pelican'?

Merritt edited The Tennessean and was a founding member of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, so he knew his birds.

The pelican limerick's punchline turns on the pun that nobody can see how the what?

The joke stacks belly-can and hell-he-can rhymes against the bird's name.

The 'man from Nantucket' limerick appeared in 1902 in which university's humour magazine?

The Princeton Tiger version, by Prof. Dayton Voorhees, was clean; the obscene versions came later, and an 1879 version had appeared in The Pearl.

Which science-fiction author published Lecherous Limericks in 1975?

The book held 100 limericks; he later produced Sherlockian limericks and a joint volume with John Ciardi.

Asimov's Limericks: Too Gross pairs 144 of his limericks with 144 by which poet and Dante translator?

The title is a pun: two gross is 288, the total number of verses in the book.

The British wordplay expert Leigh Mercer devised a famous limerick made entirely of what?

Read aloud, twelve plus a hundred and forty-four plus twenty and so on scans perfectly, and the sum really does equal nine squared plus nothing.

The film reviewer Ezra Haber Glenn blends limericks with movie criticism under what name?

One of his subjects was De Sica's neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves.

The whimsical four-line biographical verse form invented in a St Paul's School science class is named after whom?

His first, about Humphry Davy, came to him during a science class at St Paul's School when he was 16.

The double dactyl, often opening 'Higgledy piggledy', was invented in 1951 by Paul Pascal and which poet?

The first published collection, Jiggery-Pokery, was edited by Hecht and John Hollander.

Alongside limericks, which Lewis Carroll poem is the best-known example of nonsense verse?

Its first verse uses grammatically correct nonsense words, some of which Humpty Dumpty later explains.

The city of Limerick straddles which river?

The historic core sits on King's Island, at the head of the estuary where the river widens toward the Atlantic.

Limerick city was founded in 812 by which settlers?

They sailed up the Shannon, burned Mungret Abbey and made the site a maritime trading port.

By population, where does Limerick rank among Irish urban areas?

Only Dublin and Cork are bigger; the 2022 census counted 102,287 people in the urban area.

The Treaty of Limerick, signed in 1691, ended which conflict?

It let Jacobite soldiers sail for France in the exodus remembered as the Flight of the Wild Geese.

Limerick's Treaty Stone, reputed signing place of the 1691 treaty, originally served as what?

The irregular limestone block earned the city its nickname, the Treaty City.

The Norman castle on King's Island in Limerick, dating from 1210, is named after which English king?

The Normans also built St Mary's Cathedral, which is older still, from 1168.

At Thomond Park in Limerick in 1978, Munster famously beat which touring side 12-0?

The teams met again there in 2008 and Munster lost 18-16; the ground was also unbeaten in the Heineken Cup for 26 straight games.

Limerick's county team won five All-Ireland senior titles between 2018 and 2023 in which sport?

The county's football side won the very first All-Ireland football championship in 1887, but has lived in hurling's shadow since.

Which Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of a poverty-stricken childhood is set mainly in Limerick?

Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930; the family returned to his mother's home city and sank further into poverty.

Which band from Limerick does the city's Wikipedia article name as a product of its music scene?

Guitarist Noel Hogan's MonoBand and The Hitchers also came out of the city.

The University of Limerick, established in 1989, was notable as the first Irish university founded since when?

It began life in 1972 as the National Institute for Higher Education, about 5 km east of the centre in Castletroy.

Limerick's Georgian quarter, Newtown Pery, is unusual for an Irish city because it is laid out how?

It was built in the late 18th century, before the Act of Union, and remains the city's commercial centre.

The verse form's name may derive from a nonsense parlour game featuring what kind of recurring line?

The refrain ran along the lines of 'Will you come up to Limerick?'.

Which group of 18th-century Irish versifiers is the limerick's name sometimes particularly linked to?

They wrote in County Limerick, along the River Maigue.

In which year did the New English Dictionary record the first English use of 'limerick' for the verse form?

The dictionary dated US usage to 1902, though an 1880 Canadian newspaper reference has since been found.

Edward Lear's second limerick collection, published in 1872, was titled More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes and what?

It followed his first A Book of Nonsense of 1846.

Which phonetician argued the limerick is defined by stress counts, with lines 1, 2 and 5 carrying three stresses?

In his view the number of unstressed syllables between the beats is flexible.