Ninety-Five Limericks by John Falmouth.
95
LIMERICKS
THE LIMERICK PRESS, SUFFERN, N. Y.
NINETY-FIVE
LIMERICKS
A Contribution
to the Folk Lore of Our Time
Collected and Edited
by
JOHN FALMOUTH
COPYRIGHT 1932 BY JOHN FALMOUTH
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
FOREWORD
by the Editor
IN THE folklore of a nation, as that eminent historian Maclinovich once remarked, reside that nation's heart and soul. The songs sung in the fields, the tales told around frontier camp-fires, the legends told and retold by travelers and troubadours—these show a people, an era, more truly than the belles lettres of the upper classes. The Bible itself is a collection of racial legends; Homer's epics are the tales of a nation rather than of one man; he Morte D'Arthur, Shakespeare's plays, even the Negro Spirituals of yesterday, owe their greatness and strength to the fact that they are stories up from the roots of the common people.
Today we have no frontier camp-fires, no troubadours, no glamorous Kings, and no deeply felt religion to inspire and maintain folklore similar to that of past ages. But we do have a folklore. We possess tales, songs, poems that have sprung from the earth, that know no composer or author but rather are an expression of the whole people. The traveling salesman with his healthy, earthy, down-to-fundamentals humorous story has replaced the troubadour of old. The Bastard King of England, Christofer Columbo, Frankie and Johnnie are the new epics of a new Homer, the new Bible, the new Morte D'Arthur. The man in the field no longer bursts into short snatches of song. No, now the man in the gutter sings a limerick.
Limericks are a vital part of the folklore of our age, of our civilization. Being a historian, the editor has often pondered the problems confronting future historians in telling the story some hundreds of years hence of this, our own era. Having depended so often upon the available folklore of ages past for learning the soul of those
ages, the editor has looked about him to ascertain what the future historian will find to show him our era.
Some attempts have been made to collect our folklore, but they have been often either too small in scope or too unscientific in spirit. The editor has often grieved to see songs dulled by nice words, limericks deadened by printable phrases, tales killed by uncensorable climaxes. Such is not the science of history. The flavor gone, reality masked, the soul of the people repainted—historians of the future cannot depend upon such as these!
Arduous as the task appeared, the editor set himself to remedy this situation, to fill this tremendous gap in the printed evidence of our age. For his first research he selected the modern limerick, and this slim volume is the poor result of his efforts.
The limerick is a peculiar verse-form, ideally suited by its swing and easy rhythm to folklore, to the songs of the people. The limericks for children by Edward Lear are not real limericks in that he has not correctly used the verse-form. His limericks usually have the first and
last lines identical. Versifiers would readily agree that the two short lines naturally lead to a climax in the last long line. What a false note when that climactic line merely restates the opening line!
And there enters the second point proving the non-genuineness of the Lear limericks. Observe that verse foot. Could it possibly be constructed for sweet and innocent subject matter? Never!
The limerick is composed of dactyls. The dactyl is a perfect phallic symbol, far more anatomically complete than Cleopatra's Needle, or church spires or the Empire State Building.
A long and two shorts. A perfect phallic symbol! (It may be mentioned that the anapaest is just as perfect a phallic symbol only the gentleman is facing the other direction, thus:
).This should prove conclusively to the reader that the limerick is by its very form constructed for the singing of earthy, natural, phallic subjects. And, of course, the great force of nature which orders us to propagate the race, that supreme power which prevents race suicide, is the subject of most limericks. It is sung of in both its simple and complicated forms of expression. Other subjects occasionally are treated of, for example, the end actions of that other great force of Nature, the taking in of sustenance to maintain individual life. Always, however, real limericks treat of fundamental, basic realities.
One more point might be mentioned to disprove the genuineness of the Lear limericks. He was the author of his limericks. Limericks never seem to have authors any more than do folk-tales and legends. Only one man of the editor's acquaintance composed limericks with the genuine flavor and feeling, and to him, Mr. C. B.O., gratitude is expressed.
I also wish to acknowledge that worthy collection of Mr. Norman Douglas, whose scholarly comments arc
almost equal to the limericks themselves. Thanks are also due to a collection called Americana, to R. M. B. for editorial aid, and to my patient wife for her courage and strength and moral support in my arduous research.
Humbly and in the sincere hope that he has made a real contribution to the folklore of our age, the editor presents this little volume.