Saturday, February 18, 2023

All The Best Limericks Are Lewd (revisited)

Abraham was a wily old Jew
Who kept company with the Chosen Few
By forswearing sin
And his own foreskin
He proceeded the whole world to screw



It was a limerick that got me my first job as a junior copywriter. I had just turned 20 and was living with my parents in the house where I was born. I knew it was time to leave the family nest and learn to stand on my own feet - so when a friend mentioned that an ad agency in KL was looking for new blood, I immediately wrote to them. A few days later I received a test in the mail and was asked to compose a limerick; then write a news report about it, followed by an editorial. This was the limerick I came up with (of course I had to keep it clean):

A grand gourmand named Gus
Decided to devour a bus
But as he began to chew
He said, "Oh no, this won't do,
The passengers are making a fuss!"



Needless to say I got the job and soon found myself turning into a professional wordsmith, churning out readable text by the column inch. It didn't take long for me to realize I wasn't cut out to be a hack. Within 18 months I quit, after winning $5,000 in a slogan writing competition for Hall's cough drops, and began a checkered career as a freelancer and creative consultant. I continued to compose the occasional limerick - but somehow they were never quite lewd enough...



A fair mädchen was having her lüncheon
In a very chic cafe in München
Well, I got bold and told her
I wanted to rock'n'roll her
"Ja ja," she said and we got engaged pretty sünchen

As clean limericks go, this one ranks as an all-time winner (unfortunately I didn't write it and I don't know who did): 

A wonderful bird is the pelican;
His beak can hold more than his belican.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week,
Though I’m damned if I know how the helican!

But enough of clean limericks! Bring on the best and lewdest ones I have collected over the years. I must mention here that some of the dirtiest limericks ever written came from Isaac Asimov, acclaimed writer of sciencefiction novels. Here are a couple I like:

Said an ovum one night to a sperm,
"You're a very attractive young germ.
Come join me, my sweet,
Let our nuclei meet
And in nine months we'll both come to term."

------------------------------


"We refuse," said two men from Australia,
"Bestiality this saturnalia.
For now, we bethink us,
The ornithorhynchus
Is our down-under type of Mammalia."

And I have a gut feeling we owe this classic to Asimov:

The astronomer's crime was heinous:
"We mustn't let convention restrain us;
Though I've made a career
Out of Venus, my dear,
I'm tempted to switch to Uranus."


Let's open the floodgates of debauchery and prurience, shall we? But first, a limerick defining what limericks are really about...

The Limerick's furtive and mean, 
To be kept under close quarantine, 
Or she'll sneak to the slums, 
Where she promptly becomes 
Disorderly, drunk and obscene!

It's almost impossible to trace limericks back to their source. The memorable ones tend to get circulated and recirculated over time till they end up attributed to Anonymous (presumably an obscure Greek lyricist). Here's the rest of my collection to date:

There once was a girl from Ealing,
Who said she had no sexual feeling.
Until a cynic named Boris,
Touched her clitoris,
And they’re still scraping her off the ceiling.

-----------------------------------------


There was a young fellow from Kent,
Whose prick was so long that it bent,
To save himself trouble,
He put it in double,
And instead of coming he went.

---------------------------------------



A lesbian girl from Khartoum
Took a gay young man up to her room. 
At the start of the night 
She said "Let's get this right. 
Who does what? And with which? And to whom?"


-----------------------------------------


There was an old bishop from Buckingham 
Who spoke of young girls and of fucking 'em 
But a bishop from Wales 
Took the wind from his sails 
When he spoke of young boys and of sucking 'em







From the crypt of the Church of St. Giles 
Came a scream that carried for miles 
Said the Vicar, "Good Gracious, 
Has Brother Ignatius 
Forgotten the Bishop has piles?"

-----------------------------------------


There once was a man from Peru 
Who fell asleep in his canoe 
As he dreamt of Venus 
he played with his penis 
And woke up with a handful of goo.

---------------------------------------------


There was a young woman from Yale 
Who offered her body for sale 
For the sake of the blind 
She had her behind 
Tattooed with her prices in Braille

--------------------------------------------



There was a young fellow from Leeds,
Who swallowed a package of seeds.
Great tufts of grass,
Sprouted out of his ass,
And his balls were all covered with weeds.


-------------------------------------------


There was a young man from Lynn,
Whose prick was the size of a pin.
Said his girl with a laugh,
As she fondled his staff,
“This won’t be much of a sin.”


---------------------------------------------


There was a young lady from Maine,
Who enjoyed copulating on a train.
Not once, I maintain,
But again and again,
And again and again and again.


------------------------------------------


There was a young actress from Crewe, 
Who remarked as the vicar withdrew, 
The Bishop was quicker 
and thicker and slicker, 
And two inches longer than you.

-------------------------------------------------

There was a young plumber from Lee 
who was plumbing his girl with great glee, 
she said,  "Stop your plumbing, 
I think someone's coming..." 
Said the plumber, still plumbing, "It's me!"

-------------------------------------------------

A kinky young girl from Coleshill, 
Tried a dynamite stick for a thrill, 
They found her vagina 
in North Carolina, 
and bits of her tits in Brazil.

-------------------------------------------------

There was a young man from Pitlocherie, 
making love to his girl in the rockery, 
she said, "Look you've cum 
all over my bum, 
This isn't a shag, it's a mockery."

-------------------------------------------------

There was a young lassie from Morton, 
who had one long tit and one short'un, 
on top of all that 
a great hairy twat, 
and a fart like a six fifty Norton.

----------------------------------------

There was a young man from Harrow 
who had one as big as a marrow. 
He said to his tart, 
"Try this for a start. 
My balls are outside on a barrow."

------------------------------------

There was a young girl from Hitchin, 
who was scratching her crotch in the kitchen. 
Her mother said "Rose, 
It's crabs, I suppose." 
She said "Bollocks, get on with your stitchin'."

-----------------------------------------

There was a young girl from Devizes, 
who had tits of different sizes. 
One was quite small, 
almost nothing at all, 
But the other was big and won prizes.

--------------------------------------

There once was a young man from Brighton,
Who said to a young lass, “You’re a tight’un!”
She said, “Listen, Hon,
You’re in the wrong one.
There’s plenty of room in the right one.”

------------------------------------

A lady while dining at Crewe,
Found an elephant’s dong in her stew,
Said the waiter, “Don’t shout,
Or wave it about,
Or the others will all want one too!”

--------------------------------------

There was a young woman of Croft,
Who played with herself in a loft,
Having reasoned that candles,
Could never cause scandals,
Besides which they did not go soft.

----------------------------------------

There was a young woman named Sally, 
who loved an occasional dally, 
she sat on the lap
of a well endowed chap, 
Crying, "Gee, Dick, you're right up my alley!"

----------------------------------

There was a young gaucho named Bruno 
Who said "If there is one thing I do know, 
A woman is fine, 
a donkey divine, 
But the llama is numero uno."

---------------------------------------

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose schlong was so long he could sucket
He said with a grin
Wiping spunk off his chin
"If my ear were a cunt I could fucket!"



Nantucket seems to have inspired more than its fair share of limericks, not all of them lewd - but they do merit a passing mention, if only for their literary value:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

This soon spawned a sequel...

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

What better way to end this post than with a mathematical limerick composed by Leigh Mercer (1893-1977) who came up with this poetic equation:

Translated into plain English it reads:

A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.


[First posted 26 April 2017, reposted 18 September 2018, 31 March 2019, 25 August 2019 &
16 September 2021]