[Ads-l] "The Limerick: a History 1820-1920"

[Stephen Goranson]

'This new book by Bob Turvey (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2024) does present many limericks and quotations about limericks.

But--oddly for a History-- it explicitly omits three subjects, one of which is why limericks are called limericks!
>From page 19 of the Kindle version:

"Three topics are not discussed in this book. First, I do not address the question of why limericks are called limericks. This is such a big subject that it would make this book twice as long. I have therefore written a separate work addressing this question. I can answer it succinctly, though: limericks really do seem to have been sung to the beat of a now forgotten tune whose chorus was “Won’t you come up to Limerick?” Boring as it may be, that is how they acquired their name. They were probably called limericks in the late 1860s, and probably in England."

As Mr. Turvey knows, I have proposed a somewhat different origin. It was discussed on this list and then published on Language Log blog:
"Limerick Poems and Civil Wars<https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=31647>
March 18, 2017 @ 7:33 am · Filed by Mark Liberman<https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=2> under Etymology<https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=178>"
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=31647
Stephen Goranson





------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org