What is a limerick?
Tekst/illustrasjoner:
Anne Schjelderup og Brigid McCauley/Anne Schjelderup
Filosofiske spørsmål:
Øyvind Olsholt
Sist oppdatert: 20. januar 2004
Limericks
have been told for hundreds of years. Nobody knows who started
telling them, or when or where they originated. All we know is
that they take their name from the Irish city of Limerick (situated
in the county
by the same name). On these pages we shall learn more about limericks
and also do some exercises.
Two examples
A limerick is a poem
with a special rhythm.
Read the limericks below and see if you can figure
out the pattern:
There was an old dame
from Peru,
And she dreamt she was chewing
her shoe.
She woke
up in the night
in a terrible fright
when she found it was perfectly
true.
Said an ape
as he swung
by his tail,
To his offspring
both female
and male;
"From your offspring,
my dears,
In a
couple of years,
May evolve
a professor at Yale."
About limericks
Limerick, pronounced
"lihm-uhr-ihk", is a form of humorous
verse. It takes its name from the city of Limerick in Ireland.
No one knows how or where the form originated.
Limericks may cover
a wide
range of subjects. The first line often begins with: "There
was a ..." and ends with the name of a person or place. The
last line usually
contains
an amusing
or surprising
punch
line.
Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense (1846) made the form
popular. The following is a typical limerick by Lear:
There was a young lady of
Wilts,
Who walked up to Scotland on stilts;
When they said it is
shocking
To show so much stocking,
She answered, "Then what about kilts?"
Suggested topics for philosophical discussion
- No one knows how, where or when people began to write limericks,
but somehow this humourous form of poetry became a tradition
that is still very popular today. When you start to think about
it more closely, there are many other things that are as unexplainable
as the origin of the limerick. For instance: how, where or
when did people start using words to communicate with each
other? What was the first word to be said in the world? What
was the first sentence? When did Norwegians first start to
think of themselves as "Norwegians" for
the very first time? Where does a river start? When did you
start to think of yourself as a person with responsibility
for yourself?
- Consider the old dame from Peru who dreamt she was chewing
her shoe. She was alarmed to wake up and discover that her
dream was in fact true. Has something like this ever happened
to you? Have you ever dreamt that you were doing something
at the same time as you were in fact doing it in reality?
What kind of actions would you say are possible to dream and
do at the same time:
– chew a shoe?
– walk around the house?
– have a conversation with a friend?
– watch TV?
– eat a sandwich?
– cuddle your pet?
– ride a bike?
– play a computer game?
- The second limerick is about an ape that tells his children
that, given
time, apes may grow into human beings, who in
turn may become university professors. Do you think that
humans have evolved
from apes? If not, where do human beings come from? Is it likely
that there is no connection between human beings and the animal
world? Would you say that humans are a kind of animal?
Is it just as difficult to say when the human
race started as it is to say when and where the first limerick
was made?
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