The joys of bamb lyriani - the limerick comes of age

[Nick Armstrong]

If we're heading Cam-wards, and seasonally in view of tomorrow afternoon's Advent service, we should perhaps revisit the old classic:

There was a young man from St John's
Who wanted to b*gger the swans.
"No sir!" said a porter,
"Please - take my daughter;
The swans are reserved for the dons"


And taking the cue from your second, umslops:

There was a young man from Devizes
Whose b**ls were of differing sizes
One was so small
It was no b**l at all,
But the other was huge and won prizes

Here's one written by my friend Keith when we were both undergraduates at Cambridge. It formed part of his 'Cambridge Book of Dirty Punting Songs, of which I alas know not the fate:

Some eminent fellows of Downing
Went punting in thick gravy browning
A fellow fell over
Abjuring Jehovah
Oh Lord! Bloody hell! I am drowning!

But the rude ones are the funniest. At the risk of attracting the wrath of our hosts:

There was a young man of Madras
Whose b**ls were made out of brass
In windy weather
They rubbed together
And sparks flew out of his a*se.

[umslopogaas]

Great stuff Cali, I'd forgotten the one about the man from St Johns. Wouldnt surprise me in the least, though we never got up to that sort of thing at Queens' (probably only because Queens' was dead poor and couldnt afford swans).

Here's one that was reputedly made up by a group, each person contributing one line
;

There was a young fellow called Sidney
who drank till he injured a kidney.
He drank and he drank
And it shrank and it shrank
Well, he had fun doing it, didnt he?

And to lower the tone even more:

From the crypt of the church of St Giles
Came a scream that echoed for miles
Said the vicar Good gracious!
Has Father Ignatius
Forgotten the bishop has piles?

[Padraig]

An astonishing fact 'tis, but true,
That when writing a poem, as I do,
No matter how hardly
I try to be bardly
I end up with a limerick that's blue.

[usher]

In his rooms in Oxford in 1911 Ronald Knox was sitting in company with some other young dons when one of them, reading a magazine, called out, "Here's a good title--the Bishop-Elect of Vermont". In less than the time it took him to turn round and put his feet on the floor (an eye-witness wrote) Knox came out with

An Anglican curate in want
Of a second-hand, portable font,
Will exchange for the same
A photo (with frame)
Of the Bishop-Elect of Vermont

But his non-limerick masterpiece has to be

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow over Balliol Hall--
As if the Cosmos were controlled
By Dr Jowett, after all.