by rjw

Despite their (almost always realised) potential for doggerel, I like limericks.

Definition:

A limerick is a poem, typically in anapestic meter (two short syllables, one short syllable, which gives it a sort of jaunty feeling, suitable for comedic verse), with five lines in a strict rhyme scheme AABBA.

Example:

The limerick packs laughs astronomical

in a space that is most economical.

But of the ones that I've seen,

so few have been clean,

and the clean ones are seldom so comical.

There was once a good database of them, Limerick DB, which was set up by xkcd's Randall Munroe. It has since been taken down / died so the link points to a copy on The Internet Archive.

Has anyone written any limericks? It's the kind of thing that even someone who doesn't write any other kind of poetry can pull off. Do you think they're tawdry? A bit old-fashioned? Non-English limericks? Is there anything in your culture that has a similar or different feeling?