Could you guide me to the roots of this piece of literature?
There was a young girl from Madras
Who had a magnificent ass;
Not rounded and pink,
As you maybe think–
It was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.
If it is impossible to established authorship, could you maybe find out where and when it first appeared in print / on the internet, and whether the protagonist was a girl, a boy, or a man in the oldest version? See, literary scholars do not work on really important questions. You are the only hope.
According to Gershorn Legman’s compendium The Limerick (first edition 1964, my edition 1969), the first printed version, essentially identical to yours with the substitution of “probably” for “maybe,” is apparently from Peter Pauper’s Limerick Book (1942), p. 93. According to Legman, it is “the last limerick in the book, with a tail-piece by Herbert Roth showing a naked young woman with enormous buttocks riding on a donkey.” Legman’s text apparently indicates that an earlier, perhaps oral, version, was recorded in 1940, but it is not entirely clear to me what his source code means.
Legman’s monumental work, containing 1700 examples, is highly recommended to those with a scholarly interest in this verse form.
I would be crying Bravo! except that I expected the answer to be in limerick form. However, that book is now in my list of reference works to add to my library.
Ah, the great Legman! I’ll never forget reading his Rationale of the Dirty Joke as a schoolboy and thinking, as it were, oh brave new world that has such volumes in it!.
Oh the gloriously filthy jokes in that huge learned work, all grouped according to kind, fetish, etc! Alas, I never did get round to Volume 2.
