Rude, Lewd, Crude, and Here to Stay...

There once was a lady named Cager,

Who as the result of a wager,

Consented to fart,

The entire oboe part

Of Mozart's quartet in F-major.

Recognize this poetry form?  Let's see...vulgar humor (check), impolite wordplay (check), AABBA rhyme scheme (check), why it must be a limerick!

Limericks appear throughout the broad span of the English language, from pubs to Shakespeare.  Don Marquis, the humorist and playwright, stated that there are three types of limericks:  limericks to be told when ladies are present; limericks to be told when ladies are absent but clergymen are present; and LIMERICKS!  This comment well illustrates the bawdy and lewd notoriety limericks have.

Although its history is obscure, some say the limerick originated in France during the Middle Ages, then crossed the English Channel.  An alternative origin is said to be the pubs of the Irish town of Limerick, but most likely that's where the name originated, but not the concept.  Other sources claim a 14th century origin from pubs.  Wherever they began, the limerick is here to stay.

Mother Goose rhymes associated the limerick forever with children's literature:

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating of curds and whey;
There came a great spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

In 1846, over a century after the Mother Goose rhymes were published, Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense was published, somewhat of a benchmark for the form.  Lear preferred the word "nonsense" to "limerick" no doubt because of the limerick's reputation.  One of his famous ones was:

There was a Young Lady whose chin,

Resembled the point of a pin;

So she had it made sharp,

And purchased a harp,

And played several times with her chin.

Composed of five lines, the limerick has a strict rhyme scheme and a catchy rhythm.  The first two lines rhyme, the third and fourth lines rhyme, and the fifth either rhymes with the first two, or repeats the first line.  Simply put (or "dumly" put) it follows an AABBA rhyme pattern like this:

da DUM da da DUM da da DUM

da DUM da da DUM da da DUM

da DUM da da DUM

da da DUM da da DUM

da DUM da da DUM da da DUM

(Note:  one of my favorite jokes is a limerick, but I will not publish it here.  It is only for pubs.)

Punch magazine in the 1860s, inspired by Lear's book, ran limerick contests and for a while limericks became a big craze.  Although the fad died out, the limerick still lived on.  A remarkable roster of  authors have engaged in limerick writing:  Ogden Nash, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, and Mark Twain were among them.  But perhaps most surprising is Isaac Asimov's book, Lecherous Limericks, published in 1975.   It contains 100 limericks he wrote, of which the following was the first:

There was a sweet girl of Decatur,
Who went to sea on a freighter.
She was screwed by the master,
- An utter disaster -
But the crew made up for it later.

That limericks have been constructed by a wide sweep of people, from pub crawlers to formal poets, makes them folk literature.  They are also truly an English poetry and literary form, since the rhyme scheme and rhythm make them difficult to write in other languages.

I like this modern limerick by Sheila Anne Barry:

There was an old puzzler, Ben Ross,
Who died - doing crosswords, of course,
He was buried, poor Ben,
With eraser and pen,
In a box six feet down, three across.

My favorite limerick story is my own.  One holiday season when I was able and did work a lot of overtime, I had a night off which I needed to do some gift shopping.  My 13-year-old cousin cajoled me into taking him out to dinner (truth be told, I loved hanging out with him!), and I acquiesced with the caveat that we would be going to a bookstore first.  Once in the store he headed to a bargain display, and I walked around to the other side.  All of a sudden I heard his very loud voice call out:  "Hey, Linda.  What's a bl*w j*b?"  He had found a book of limericks.  In total panic I quickly thought, "Nobody knows I'm Linda.  Simply walk out of the store."  Just as I had this realization, the good-looking man standing next to me said, "Judging from how red you are turning, you must be Linda."  I spent the rest of the evening refusing to discuss the words I told him never to say in public, and referring him to his father for the answer, thus losing my coolest adult in the world status.

I will end with a limerick from the Bard himself (Othello, Act II, Scene III), just to balance the above with a loftier tone, even though as limericks go it's kind of a washout.  (BTW, a canakin is a small can used as a drinking vessel, from a Dutch word):

And let me the canakin clink, clink;

And let me the canakin clink.

A soldier's a man;

A life's but a span;

Why, then let a soldier drink.

*******************************

The First Women Composers of the West

In the Occitan during the 12th and 13th centuries, court women were expected to sing, play instruments, and write jocs partis or partimen (debates and dialogues written in poems.)  Women, at this time in this part of the world, had some power, some control over land ownership, and played a bigger role in society.  One reason for this was the crusades, when women had more responsibilities and took charge of running things while their menfolk were away.

Comtessa de Diá, Bibliothèque Nationale,
MS cod. fr. 12473, 13th C.

Trobairitz were female troubadors who composed, wrote verses, and performed for the nobility. They are the first known female composers of secular music in the West, although there were female composers who wrote sacred music before them.  The trobairitz were from the courts and were born of nobility, as opposed to their male counterparts, the troubadors, who sometimes came from humbler beginnings.  Both trobairitz and troubadours wrote about courtly love, or fin' amors. Trobairitz mostly wrote tensos (debate poems) and cansos (strophic songs - ones whose verses share the same melody).  Tensos was a common form, for in the tradition of courtly love, poems were often written as an exchange of letters, or a debate. 

The majority of information on the trobairitz comes from their vidas (bios) and razós (explanations of their songs).  These were compiled in chansonniers, or collections of their songs.  The vidas are not reliable since they contain embellishments from info gathered from their poems.  Not much is extant of the troibairitz or their work:  about thirty-two works from twenty known trobairitz.  But it is hard to determine whether a piece was written by a man or a woman.

Since the poetry was so stylized, when a poet wrote as a woman it is not clear if the poet was actually a woman, or a man speaking as a woman.  Often times the poet’s name gave no clue as to gender, and could be an alias, or a poem was written by the ubiquitous “anonymous”.  The chansonniers who compiled the works did not seem to distinguish those from the trobairitz from those from the troubadours.  In the case of tensos between a woman and a man, credit is given to the man as the originator of the dialogue, which may not have been so.

There is a feeling of sexual equality, and sex as a mode of pleasure and not sin in their songs.  With women experiencing more freedom with their lords and masters off to war, it is not surprising to to think of them as wanting to express themselves creatively.  Their geographic proximity to Muslim Spain may have been an influence as well – Muslim Spain was more sophisticated and perhaps liberal in this age.

"A chantar m'er" in modern musical notation.  (Courtesy of Makemi.)

Only one set of lyrics survives with musical notation, "A chantar m'er..." by Comtessa de Diá. She lived in the 1200s, and was the daughter of Count Isoard II of Diá.  Her vida states that she was in love with Raimbaut of Orange, but married to Guilhem de Poitiers, Count of Viennois. She wrote the following song entitled "Estat ai en greu cossirier" ("I was plunged into deep distress"):

I was plunged into deep distress by a knight who wooed me,

And I wish to confess for all time how passionately I loved him;

Now I feel myself betrayed, for I did not tell him of my love.

Therefore I suffer great distress in bed and when I am fully dressed.

Would that my knight might one night lie naked in my arms

And find myself in ecstasy with me as his pillow.

For I am more in love with him than Floris was with Blanchfleur.

To him I give my heart and love, my reason, eyes and life.

 Handsome friend, tender and good, when will you be mine?

Oh, to spend with you but one night to impart the kiss of love!

Know that with passion I cherish the hope of you in my husband's place,

As soon as you have sworn to me that you will fulfill my every wish.

*******************************

Standing in uffish thought...

Jabberwocky

Illustration to the poem Jabberwocky by Sir John
Tenniel (1820-1914).  First published in Lewis
Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and What
Alice Found There (1871).

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought –

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And Burbled as it came!

One, two!  One, two!  And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And has though slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

In 1872 a writer named Lewis Carroll wrote a poem using neologisms and nonsense words entitled Jabberwocky.  It is one of two poems that I have committed to memory.   (The other one - Beans, Beans, Musical Fruit – hasn’t come in very handy.)  While traveling in India, I won many a beer by being able to recite this in bars.  (Doesn’t work here, but I know a tongue twister that does!)

There have been several suggestions as to the inspiration for this work, but none conclusive.  Let it suffice that the Lewis Carroll mind needed little to cerebrally boink. 

Despite the words, the poem observes established poetic forms, such as quatrain verses, iambic meter, and an abab rhyme scheme.  Carroll’s sport with this poem has been compared with two of his contemporaries – Edward Lear and Gerard Manley Hopkins – but there is no evidence of interaction. Perhaps it was something in the air, or the water.

Jabberwocky has been translated into many languages, which must be a translator’s nightmare.  Most translators seem to have created their own words to replace Carroll’s invented ones.  It’s even been translated into Chinese by inventing Chinese characters for the nonsense words.

Some scholars believe that the true purpose of Jabberwocky was to make fun of pretentious poetry, and to fool (equally pretentious) literary critics.  It’s also said to be a parody of contemporary Oxford scholarship.  Yet another take on it is that it was designed to teach how NOT to write a poem, which makes the fact that it is included in many classroom poetry curricula ludicrous.  Carroll would’ve loved that!

2001, Pan Books
Commemorative
Edition

Many satires have been done on it; one of the funniest ones from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

Oh Freddled Gruntuggly

by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

Oh freddled gruntbuggly they micturations are to me

As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.

Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes

And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,

Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my

Blurglecrucheon, see if I don’t!

(My spellchecker is burbling dangerously!)

There are many authors who offer interpretations of  the words from Jabberwocky.  The best analysis of the poem, which includes Carroll’s commentary, is in Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice.  But I think it best to just read it, or listen to it, with your mind’s translator turned off.  Just let the words flow, and you just might sense what it all means.

Illustration by Sir John Tenniel
Remember, "Feed Your Mind".

******************************