Posting the lyrics in another thread, I just noticed that the chorus in Tom Paxton’s Born on the Fourth of July is actually a limerick
I was born on the fourth of July.
No one more loyal than I
When my country said so
I was ready to go
And I wish I’d been left there to die.
Are there any others?
That’s a pretty broad definition of “limerick” – just meter and basic rhyme scheme. *Hickory Dickory Dock *would qualify, I think.
The more common, stricter definition has rules like, “must begin with ‘There once was an X from Y’…”
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
do not rhyme.
Yeah, just looking for meter and rhyme.
The Beastie Boys’ “Negotiation Limerick File” is all composed of limericks, if I recall.
“Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” by Flatt & Scruggs (and a lot of other people) kind of fits the pattern:
Well I ain’t gonna work on the railroad,
And I ain’t gonna work on the farm.
Gonna lay around the shack
Till the mail train comes back
Rollin’ in my sweet baby’s arms.
Parts of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”. He’s noted it himself in interviews.
Now Paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And he’s talkin’ with Davy,
Who’s still in the Navy
And probably will be for life
“Railroad” and “farm” is about the worst slant rhyme I’ve ever heard of.
The Beatles’ “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” is in perfect AABBA limerick form.
I also seem to remember something about troop ships…
Novelist do not rhyme with wife and life.
A limerick has an AABBA rhyme scheme. If it were ABCCB, then Holly Jolly Christmas is a bunch of limericks. But it ain’t.
The dwarves’ song in The Hobbit has the limerick rhyme scheme, though organized into four lines instead of five.
Far over Misty Mountains cold
Through dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To claim our long-forgotten gold
I don’t know where you got your alleged definition, but “more common” hardly applies
“The first line traditionally introduces a person and a place, with the place appearing at the end of the first line and establishing the rhyme scheme for the second and fifth lines.”
– from here
The form’s popularizer, Edward Lear, always followed this. As do all “joke” limericks (e.g., “There once was a man from Nantucket…”).
Apparently, the word limerick is “commonly” used more loosely now, so it turns out you may be right about that. I should have, it seems, used a different word, like “traditionally”.
Bumping because of that holiday classic The Annoying Drummer Boy