It\u27s been more than a decade since Maxey Brooke surveyed the various ways in which the limerick has been gimmicked (see  Limerick-Gimerick , February 1980).  It\u27s time to revisit this specialized niche of wordplay

Greenwood, Douglas

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114 A FEW TRICKY LIMERICKS s q DOUGLAS GREENWOOD bBarrie, Ontario, Canada It's been more than a decade since Maxey Brooke surveyed the various ways in which the limerick has been gimmicked (see "Lim-erick-Gimerick", February 1980). It I s time to revisit this specia 1-ized niche of wordplay. First, a pure back-slang limerick. Vertical lines have been in-serted as an aid to scansion: Ereth ecno I saw a wollef I dellac mada, Ni evol I a lerig I dellac ava, Neth eh decked I reh taf esra,  Dena neth esh I dais, "Elba, Sa w 1 I ere I was I mada, dam-a." Translation: n There once was a fellow called Adam, In love -- a girl called Ava, ic.  Then he kicked her fat arse,  And then she said, "Able Was I ere 1 saw Adam, a-mad." The ultimate would be a true, correctly rhyming limerick-pal in-drome. Whoever comes up with one should be buried next to Shakes-peare -- scalped and upside down I As Now for some other slang. If you are an Oxford ma n, you won' t need any translation of this one: A young Oxford man with degrugger Put a po on the Maggers Memugger.  After such a great ecker,  He got a stern lecker SeEBy a buller and thrown from the Ugger. For those from that other university, that 's: A young Oxford man arcwith a degree put a chamber-pot on the Martyr's Memorial. After such exercise he got a stern lecture by a proctor's assistant and IS to was thrown out of The Union. pre From Oxford let us go down to Cockney. I use that word "down" in merely in the sense that when an Oxford man leaves Oxford he tra goes "down" (and, of course, an Oxford feminist does exactly the of same thing). mu~ fro,"He's a bad artful dodger," she swears,  "He runs down the apples and pears.  115 the im-lal-in-:ihn-kes-",on't he the It' sag00 s e b erry p u d din ' Sends his plates 0' meat thuddin'," "No bird lime for quiet," he declares. I n English? "He's a bad lodger," she swears. "He runs down the stairs, it's a woman that sends his feet thudding." "No time for quiet," he declares. I don't know whether this one will be allowed by the editor, but: A garage mechanic in Georgia Said, "Mistah, ah've something to tell yia. If y'all lose all your all, Y'all be sore as a ball, 'Cause your water'll all ball awayia." Pig Latin? The progenesis of the following one is a non-limerick verse in similar "pig Latin" form: 0, TOME, ISA ERES AGO, FORTIBVS ES IN ARO, NOBILE, NOBILE, THEMSTRVX, YVSILE, SEWAT SINEM -- IVST GVANO. The translation can be found in Answers and Solutions in August. The palindrome here is not new but so far as I know the limer-ick is: Naomi met a new pal in Rome, Who devised her a new pa lind rome. After eating boloney, He then said, "Naomi, Sex at noon taxes, I moan." As for royal mottoes: If hon i soit qui rna I y pense, The dieu et mon droit's my respon se, If evil's to be Then let it be me, Sic transit gloria mundi at once, See a good dictionary if you need translations ~ Incidentally, the limerick beat is generally anapestic: I am mon I arch of all I I survey. Fine, until the next line: My right I there is none I to dispute (both from William Cowper), What happened to the anapest in the first beat of line two? Ah, say the poetry professors, an iambus can be used instead of an anapest anywhere in the line -- especially in the first foot. I t Just shows how frus-trating it can be trying to "scan" the beat of poetic lines. All of which is simply to lead us to a limerick Mrs. Malaprop surely must have written (actually I did!). She is here under an attack from a stern taskmaster: "It's a true I actuar I ial fact," anapest,anapest,anapest Said Ms. Mal I aprop un I der "a tact," anapest,anapest,anapest 116 "It's nev I er dactylic, iambic ,anapest The stern limerick, iambic, dactyl ic TI-h's a ve I ry didact , ical act." anapest,anapest,anapest So mix your meter, but be careful; Mrs. M. just about gets away with it. (She knows it's an actual fact.) 1 finish up with a limerick in Greek: MAlA Grecian ca lIed \l ba ked a IT, HarMade her friends on the <5 a 11 Ij!,  "If one t we 11, cYour IT it will a, s\) IT we could not eat in x." t Again, look up the translation in Answers and Solutions ion August. C ISMANIA Car What should one call an uncontrollable urge to collert 1.< Tords Tom ending in -ism? Alan and Theresa von Altendorf, the husband-Carand-T,!]1e compilers of Isms: A Compendium of Concepts, Doc-Btrines, Tra its and Beliefs from Ableism to Zygodacty lism (Mustang Publishing, Memphis TN, 1991,. $16.95) obviously Tom suffer from this not-yet-medically-recognlzed ailment. In Cara book of 335 pages, they have collected and defined some tTvO thousand isms, from dictionary-sanctioned entries such m as atheism to spur-of-the-moment inventions In neT,,?spapers Tom and magazines such as Nancyism (policies or practices of d Reagan /s T,lnfe) 0 A fe-.,.? isms peculiar to logology are inrluded il (anagrammatism, lipogrammatism, spoonerIsm, malapropism) as .....?ell as the family based on Greek letters (itacism, iota-CIsm, rhotacism, etacism, mutacism, lambdacism). There are even a few isms that relate to real objects rather than ab- Tom stract beliefs (jism, chrism), plus the occasional T,?itticism 1( (logarithm, an Ism for someone .....?ith a speech impediment). CanBased on a small sample (isms beginning ra- or re-), I note 35 isms, comparing favorably T,lTith the 60 tabulated V in Gale Research Company's -Ologies & -Isms (Third Edition, Tom 1986), but some-.,.?hat less favorably 1,?ith the 59 in a reversp.-alphabetical listing of 3900 Isms from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition. If one is T,.?illing to overlook Can the authors I pohtical biases (expressed In such entries as f€ the ones on Reagan ism, capitalism, commun ism, historical 01 materialism, etc.), the book is a delightful browse through Tom,such oddities as wowserism, booksellerism, ipsedixitism, jog- s( trott ism, pussyfootism, upperhandism and the 1ike. The book f( IS illustrated -.,.?ith a wide variety of droll dra-.,.?ings from the last century, supplied by Dover Publica tions. Can Tom n Can 

A Few Tricky Limericks

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A Few Tricky Limericks

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