There lived a man whose family called him Tom,
His neighbours all just thought him a right gom,
But on the Net
He chanced to get
And made a fortune through a CD-Rom.

Secondly, there is a very precise rhythm, which can be described as follows: light - heavy, light - heavy, light - heavy, light-heavy, light - heavy (5 feet of iambs or variations on the iamb): this applies to the first, second and fifth lines; the third and fourth lines are similar but shorter, just two feet of iambs, and rarely diverging from the pattern. Perhaps it would be easier to describe the pattern using "te" for the short beats, and "tum" for the heavy ones. It would run like this:

Te tum, te tum, te tum, te tum, te tum,
Te tum, te tum, te tum, te tum, te tum,
Te tum, te tum,
Te tum, te tum,
Te tum, te tum, te tum, te tum, te tum.

Variations can occur in the rhythm, which can enliven it but must not disturb the pattern, for example :

Te tum, te te tum, te te tum , te te tum, te te tum.

Let me illustrate the standard and the variation on the rhythm. Take for example, the first line goes the iambic way, or the te - tum way, here:

There was a man who liked to eat his bread

Using the variation, or sets of anapaests instead of constant iambs, you can get lines like the following:

There was a young woman who never descended the hill

Conventions exist in standard wording too. First lines very often begin with "There was …" and end with the name of a place or person, for example,

There was a boy who came to live in Dublin

The catch here is that the last word of the first line becomes the crucial one of the limerick; the second line and the fifth line, or punch-line, must rhyme with it, and that can be difficult, particularly with a place-name that has more than one syllable.

Of course, when it succeeds, it is part of the charm of the genre, and clever double or treble rhymes are much appreciated, for example, "troublin'" and "bubblin'" with the city name above. If the name of a place or person is what you need to emphasise, try scribbling it in the margin using different letters of the alphabet in ones or twos in place of the first letter; that is how I got the two rhymes above.

A further search would yield "nubbling", also "pubbling", which though a nonsense word might suggest the frequenting of hostelries. It is even better if you can combine two separate words to rhyme with your keyword, for example, "brawl-way" to rhyme with "Galway". Let me state here and now that I have no desire to cast imputations of the peaceful profile of that fair city; I'm just using the words as an example!.

You have to try and get the maximum number of rhymes with the key-word and then decide how you can use them. It's so easy with words such as "May" and "Bell", but there is less challenge in them, so less fun.

Try using this information now to commemorate some event, or to satirise some person or circumstances. With a bit of luck you'll have fun and entertain your friends, maybe get the lines published, but be careful: the form can be conducive to biting wit, scatological verses, charges of being offensive in various ways, or even libel actions, so don't come to me if you get yourself into a lot of trouble. I'm just a literary critic, after all!

Patricia Lynch

Tips for writing clean & dirty Limericks

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