Spotlight: The Limerick; Irish Culture

Top of the mornin' to ya!

An optional assignment in the lab today (to celebrate St. Patrick's Day) is the limerick (and a bit about Irish culture).

SPOTLIGHT on: The Limerick

A limerick is a humorous poem originating in Ireland. All limericks have five lines and are written in what we call a rhyme scheme. A rhyme scheme is a pattern that indicates (shows) how the line in a poem ends.  A rhyme scheme starts with the letter "A", for example, and if the next line doesn't rhyme with the first, it is labeled "B" and so on throughout the alphabet. As creative writing majors, we expect you to be able to determine rhyme scheme for any given poem. For the limerick, that means the following:

For example:       

I once knew a man named Matt     A

Who always used to wear a hat      A

to cover his hair                              B

which was not there                        B

He was really as bald as a bat         A

The rhyme scheme for a limerick is AABBA.  Which means the first two lines will end with an exact rhyme and rhyme with each other. The third and fourth lines will rhyme with each other and the last line will rhyme with the first two lines.

In a limerick, the first two lines and the last line are generally longer than the third and fourth lines. To be absolutely accurate the meter for a limerick is 8 syllables in the first, second and fifth lines and 5 syllables in the third and fourth lines. Some poets will disregard the meter by a syllable or two as they deem necessary.

Most limericks begin with the phrase:  There once was a...

Example:   There once was a tuna named Lee

                  Who was scared to swim and float free.

                  He tried, till he choked.

                  While his friends all joked

                  And called him "Chicken of the Sea."

Shhh. Okay. And now the real truth about Limericks. They were originally written to be dirty and crass (to make people laugh). Their subject matter was usually, if not always, sexual. If you must see some of these, take a look here: but check this link at your own risk. For mature students only. 

Activity:  Try writing a humorous limerick or two.  Follow the pattern above to create your poem.  It may help you to make a list of rhyming words in your journal before you begin so that you have a lot of choices to pick from.


William Butler Yeats (Modern Period Irish poet)

• The Second Coming (read by poet Ted Hughes--former husband of Sylvia Plath)
• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
• The Stolen Child
• When You Are Old (read by Cillian Murphy)
• Song of Wandering Aengus (read by Michael Gambon)

A plethora of contemporary Irish poets:

• Eavan Boland
• Seamus Heaney
• Patrick Kavanagh
• Spike Milligan
• Paul Muldoon
• Lewis MacNeice

James Joyce: click link for bio and video about his life.

• Araby (famous short story)
• The Dead (famous short story--one of my all time favorite pieces...)

Samuel Beckett (Irish playwright)

• Happy Days (full play 75 min.)
• Krapp's Last Tape (full play, 70 min. with the late John Hurt)

Inside the Irish Food & Drinking Culture (short video/documentary) & Ireland Pop Culture: Pubs

What Ireland means to Americans: Pop culture