The poem says it all <g>.

More seriously, while there are several excellent clean limericks, the vast majority do tend to be - well, as Don Marquis put it, there are three distinct types: “Limericks to be told when ladies are present; limericks to be told when ladies are absent but clergymen are present–and LIMERICKS”.

As I said in a previous commentary, the limerick is a nicely balanced combination of a clever and entertaining structure and a fairly low entry barrier; this has been responsible for a flood of limericks that is, conceivably, greater in volume than the sum total of all other amateur verse. And, while the form was popularised by the decidedly clean (but so seldom comical¹) limericks of Lear, somewhere along the line it became inextricably intertwined with the bawdy.

An intriguing thing about limericks is that, while few of them are attributed, they nonetheless have a surprising spreading power and lifetime. There is a large body of famous limericks, many of them in several minor variations, that seem to have entrenched themselves in the collective canon without much benefit of formal publication or compilation. The humour definitely helps here, as does the simple, and easily memorised verse form - good limericks can and do get spread very rapidly by word of mouth (and now, of course, the internet).

One drawback (if you can call it that) of the form is that it is almost irretrievably frivolous. It’s nigh impossible to write a serious poem in limerick form (though I have seen some scattered examples), and most people don’t even bother trying. Also, the limerick is a very self-contained form; while I’ve seen several poems with each verse consisting of a limerick, I feel that the technique doesn’t really work, because of the irresistible feeling of closure when the reader reaches the fifth line.

Links

http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/classes/Handbook/limerick.html is an excellent essay on limericks

http://www.interviews-with-poets.com/poetry-directory/limerick.html has a nice collection of links

  We've run a couple of limericks on Minstrels:
    Poem #378: "There Was an Old Man with a Beard", Edward Lear
    Poem #801: "A Mosquito Was Heard to Complain", Dr. D. D. Perrin

— Martin