Though to some folks, a Limerick memoir
May seem more than a trifle bizarre
A mnemonic device
Can sometimes be nice
When your memory falls below par.
An Irish musician, O’Bannon
Was told by his lover in Shannon
“Reel tempo is fine
In its own place and time,
But be more like Pachelbel’s Canon.”
In a thong hiding regions hirsute
On the beach Mary Moore was so cute
That some lads from Glenderry
All sought to make merry
And to find a way into her suit.
There was a young fellow named Barney
Who boasted all over Killarney
That his skill at love’s game
Would put Don Juan to shame
But the ladies all knew it was blarney.
A brash young Ballinskelligs colleen
Seduced Cohn in an outdoor latrine
On a floor wet and gritty
‘Midst walls of graffiti
With pictures and words quite obscene.
A science professor named Harvey
Whose passion is butterfly larvae
With his wife came to terms
When she threw out his “worms”
And their spat was the gossip of Garvey.
A romantic old spinster from Schull
Was enticed to the Island of Mull
By an old man, quite smelly
Who mostly watched “telly”
Whom she soon found excessively dull.
When Malachy danced at a ceili
The ladies all started a melee
Over who had the right
To go with him that night
For wine, and to see his shillelagh.
As Geoff raced toward Muckross Estate
For a passionate night with a date
His burgeoning lap
Got caught in the gap
Of the gate and it made him quite late.
A most amorous housewife from Cobh1
Who with men of the town liked to rove
Was caught quite red-handed
By a buttock red-branded
When her swain backed her into a stove.
On a bastion of old Charles Fort
Megan raced in the dark to her Mort.
Though ‘twas not mort, the plight
Of the lady in white2
But the lover with whom she did sport.
Thinking most masked ball costumes were dull, a
Lad went to one dressed as a mullah
And, while some called him “sheik,”
Most thought him tres chic,
And a catch for the ladies of Tulla.
Attired in a nightgown quite frilly
Mab scolded pub-patrons in Scilly
Saying all those who said
She looked ready for bed
Were being outrageous and silly.
Two rock climbers thought ‘twould be facile
To scale the high keep of Ross Castle
For a night rendezvous
‘Til walls slippery with dew
Made their amorous plan too much hassle.
A mendacious fellow named Brandon
Told wild lies as he bragged with abandon
Of his monster, called “Ness”
And his sexual prowess
Which drew jeers from the ladies of Bandon.
They called him the prince of Priestnaggard
As around town he staggered and swaggered
Telling all within sight
That he was a white knight
But most thought him but a drunk laggard.
Kern took Brid to the Pass, Coomakista
On a pretense of viewing its vista
But his amorous try
Went sadly awry
When a tour bus arrived as he kissed her.
A fine English scholar named Slocum
Tried hard to write Limericks in Ogham3
‘Til he bruised his shin bone
On a flat standing stone
And limped all the way back to Oldham.
When Anthony Flynn from Barnatra
Went courting with his Cleopatra
He soon found she would swoon
When old tunes he would croon
Like the ones that were sung by Sinatra.
When Peg went to read Paul’s epistle
She came home covered with thistle
As she went down the path
And she met Sean McGrath
Where he taught her to play his tin whistle.
Endnotes
1. Pronounced “cove,” the last port of call of the Titanic.
2. It is said that Charles Fort is haunted by a woman in white, the ghost of Lady Ashurst, who threw herself over the battlements on her wedding day in the early 1700s after learning that her father had accidentally shot and killed her husband.
3. An alphabet of twenty-five characters used for stone and wood inscriptions in Celtic Ireland and Britain.