As you may know, we have run several columns about bluegrass haiku in the past. A couple of weeks ago I made a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep, which was to explore bluegrass limericks. I’ll admit that the limerick form is quite a bit more challenging, but I’m ready to give it a go.
The limerick is a form of Irish and English poetry that may date back to as early as the 13th century, but which was later popularized in the 19th century (some things, just like curling and democracy, take a long time to catch on). The British writer Edward Lear is credited with its popularity, though he preferred the term “nonsense” to “limerick,” and published a bunch of these little poems in a book called The Book of Nonsense.
Well the nonsense aspect certainly piqued my interest, since I’ve always been a fan of the nonsense song, like The Cuckoo, The Salty Dog Blues, and most western swing songs:
Sittin’ in the window singin’ to my love
The slop bucket fell from the window up above
A mule and a grasshopper eatin’ ice cream
The mule got sick so they laid him on a beam
I rest my case.
Anyway, the limerick has often been used either as children’s verse—which was Lear’s focus—or as more adult, innuendo-oriented fare (please don’t accidentally mix up those two boxes!) but there can really be all kinds, so why not some bluegrass limericks?
The form is tricky: it’s a five-line poem with an AABBA rhyme scheme, and is recited in a lilting 6/8 time, like a jig. Like bluegrass songs about bluegrass, there’s even a limerick about limericks, of unknown authorship:
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical
But the good ones I’ve seenSo seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical
And an unusual one by British mathematician Leigh Mercer:
A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine-squared and not a bit more
I understand this even less than the Stay All Night lyrics above, but note the AABBA form in both.
Or this one:
Tonight the super trouper lights are gonna find me
Shining like the sun
Smiling, having fun
Feeling like a number one
Oh sorry, that was the ABBA rhyme scheme. Never mind.
You might be wondering, could AI just write some funny bluegrass limericks for us? Well for one thing, I’m opposed to it because I’m told that AI limericks consume even more water at the data centers than ordinary writing assignments do. However, I did try one or two as an experiment, and again we learn that AI has no real sense of humor, that being a very human characteristic. It also seemed to struggle with the form. In fact AI is more likely to kill us all before it can write a genuinely funny or clever bluegrass limerick or a genuinely funny anything, really. Also, it may know that Carter Stanley passed away in 1966 or that Charlie Moore played with Bill Napier, but it has no sense of who those people really were, or what their music was like, or why it mattered.
So no, at least for now, the bluegrass limerick must be strictly a human endeavor.
Here are my attempts to rewrite some bluegrass songs as limericks. These won’t be very bawdy, since outside of Pretty Polly, we tend to keep things pretty family-friendly in our music:
Pig in a Pen
There stands my pig in a pen
It all seemed so perfect but then
A girl to feed swine
Can be so hard to find
When I’m back on the road once again
Bringing Mary Home
There once was a small girl named Mary
Whose hitchhiking habits were scary
Her mom at the door
Sighed “another encore?
You’d think by thirteen this would vary”
Down the Road
Every morning he walks to see Pearly
Often he heads out quite early
Old man Flatt owns a farm
From the hogs to the barn
This relates to the song somehow, surely
(hint: when reading, put the emphasis on “Flatt” and it will work out right)
Mule Skinner Blues (with a twist in the story)
I hired out as a mule skinner
In truth I was just a beginner
The mules ran away
And the captain did say
Stick to yodeling, at that you’re a winner
Backin’ to Birmingham
There once was a man in Chicago
At driving he thought he’d have a-go
He climbed in the truck
In reverse it was stuck
But you have to admire his bravado
Note: limericks usually favor true rhymes, but that one took a little liberty with the “Chicago/bravado” rhyme. I’m sorry, it was either that or have him bypass Birmingham and back it all the way to Mar-a-Lago!
Here’s one that’s more about a specific recording of a song, with a tribute to the late Pat Enright worked in:
I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow
Pat Enright he sang on the chorus
The song, it seems, never will bore us
When sung in the flick
A small visual trick
George Clooney lip-synced it for us
Leaving songs for a moment, here’s one offering up a band for summer gig:
Hey here’s a new band you should try
They’re free on the fourth of July
They’re right in your budget
We’ll let you judge it
Their logo was done with AI
Finally, one band’s studio experience:
Our band has gone in to record
Spent everything we could afford
We’re on take twenty-nine
Of a song about “shine”
Now the engineer’s sitting there bored
I hope you enjoyed these. Please don’t expect a follow-up to this anytime soon. The rhyming portion of my brain, which is located right next to the “now where did I put my keys?” portion, is exhausted!
