This is one of the oldest and most popular of limericks.

A limerick is a nonsense verse of five lines. The first, the second and the fifth lines are long and rhyme. The third and fourth lines, rhyming with each other, are short.

There are many stories about the origin of the limerick. One is that it was an old French form of poetry brought to the Irish town of Limerick in 1700 by soldiers returning from war in France. Another view traces it to the nursery rhymes published in Mother Goose's Melody (1765). A third is that it is associated with Limerick, a small town in Ireland. where it was a party game, and each participant had to improvise a nonsense verse. After each verse was completed, the whole group sang a chorus - "Will you come up to Limerick?" Limerick, today is a county in Munster, Ireland.

Limericks appeared in print for the first time in Chap Books (1820). In the 18th and 19th centuries, pamphlets called Chap books were collections of popular literature consisting of ballads, old romances, fairy tales, nursery rhymes and lives of notorious criminals. The credit for popularising nonsense verse or the limericks goes to Edward Lear (1812-88) whose Book of Nonsense was published in 1846. The term Learic was coined to refer to verses composed by Lear. He was inspired by History of Sixteen Wonderful Women (1820) and Anecdotes of Fifteen Gentlemen. A typical limerick by Lear runs thus:

There was an old man of Aosta
Who possessed a large cow, but he lost her
But they said, "Don't you see
She has rushed up a tree
You invidious old man of Aosta"?

There is a basic difference between Lear's limericks and the later day ones. While in Lear's limericks, the first and last lines are near repetitions, in the latter, the last line is used as a punchline.

The modern limerick is exploited for a climactic or surprised twist:

There was a young lady from Spain.
Who was exceedingly sick on a train
Not once but again
And again and again
And again and again and again.

Limericks may not form part of serious or high literature. They appeal to us by their ingenuity of expression, by the oddity and unexpectedness of the situation developed in a short span. They satisfy our innate, basic love of fun.