There was a young man from Kent
Whose penis was terribly bent.
To save himself trouble, He put it in double.
And rather than coming he went.
Another in this strain (British-English name-related weirdness). I’ll explain – though with all the sharp characters on this board, that could well be needless:
The city of Salisbury (Wiltshire, England) is sometimes referred to by the alternative name of Sarum – that of the one-time Roman city a couple of miles away. The next-door county of Hampshire sometimes has its name abbreviated to “Hants.”
There was a young curate of Salisbury
Whose manners were quite halisbury-scalisbury.
He ran around Hampshire
Without any pampshire,
Till his bishop compelled him to walisbury.
Another English-name-weirdie (can’t resist). About the village of Hautbois in Norfolk (pronounced “Hobbis”).
A robber named Robert from Hautbois:
Now burgling rich houses his jautbois.
Through windows he wangles
At improbable angles;
A most rubbery robber our Bautbois.
All right, let’s try this (based on fact):
The dirty old Rector of Stiffkey
Was overly fond of the niffkey;
His bizarre means of dyin’:
He was ate by a lion,
Which - you’d never get odds from the biffkey.
In similar vein:
There was a young student of Caius
Who whizzed down the slopes on his skaius;
But a Fellow of Magdalen
Said "I prefer dagdalen -
“I’ve got where I am by degraius”.
(Stookie, Keys, Mawdlin, respectively)
And further on the Fellows-of-Oxford-and-Cambridge-colleges theme (though not on the spelling one):
There was a young Fellow Of Wadham
Who asked for a ticket to Sodom.
Said the clerk, “We prefer
Not to issue them, sir” –
He said, “Don’t call me Sir, call me Modom.”
A needle-dicked freak ran amuck
Tried to bugger a canvas-back duck
His needle got stuck
And he cried “What the fuck?
What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?”
For a bit of contrast – an ostensibly “clean” one:
Wanting children, a couple once sat
For a course on how they were begat.
When the doctor expounded
They sat there dumbfounded,
And said they could never do THAT.
Another spelling one from Asimov
(As far as memory serves…)
You can’t call the British Queen Ms.
Tain 't as nice as Elizabeth is
But i think that the Queen
Would be even less keen
To be addressed as Ls .
There was a Newbie named Elwell
Who couldn’t let old threads sit well
So he conjured a witty post
That resurrected a ghost
And created a place for zombies to dwell.
(well…someone had to do it!)
There was once a young queer in Khartoum
Who took a lesbian up to his room
But they spent the whole night
In a terrible fight
Over who should do what and to whom
An Argentine gaucho named Bruno
Said there is one thing I do know
A girl is just fine
A sheep is divine
But a llama is numero uno
Here’s mine:
1,264,853,971.2758463
One Billion Two Hundred and Sixty
Four Million Eight Hundred and Fifty-
Three Thousand Nine Hun-
dred and Seventy One
Point Two Seven Five Eight Four Six Three.
*W S Gilbert *(allegedly):
There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung on the arm by a wasp,
When asked, “Does it hurt?”
He replied, “No, it doesn’t,
I’m so glad it wasn’t a hornet.”
Spike Milligan and/or Peter Sellars:
There was a young man from Cathay
On a slow boat to China one day
Was trapped near the tiller
By a sex-crazed gorilla
And China’s a bloody long way
An exchange on another message board, involving two I composed:
ME. The limerick’s a hard form to master.
If composing, go slower, not faster!
I mean, take your time
With the meter and rhyme
Else your efforts will meet with disaster.
OTHER DUDE. That was pretty excellent, Skinner. You are such a cunning linguist.
ME. “A linguist so cunning,” said she,
“Is of no little interest to me.”
“I can do maths, to boot -
So what say we compute
207 ÷ 3?”
I’ve been carrying this one around in my head for about 30 years. From a book starring the Muppets:
There was a magician named Gonzo,
Whose fame was known all over,
Yet his stunts fell flat
Every time that he tried
And his limericks don’t rhyme either.
Here’s one of my favorites:
There was a young student of John’s
Who was trying to bugger the swans.
‘Oh no’, said the porter,
‘Please take my young daughter.
The swans are reserved for the Dons’.
and then a G-rated one from my wife
The reverend Henry Ward Beecher*
called the hen a most elegant creature
The hen, hearing that
Laid an egg in his hat
And thus did the hen reward Beecher
*Well-known 19th century abolitionist and father of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe.