Fun
Some limericks
Particular thanks, if that's the correct word, go to Ralph Hancock, Jeremy Humphries and Eddie Kent, who are the main culprits behind this section.
There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley
That the best man, Colquhoun,
An inane young bolqufoun,
Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.
The bridegroom's first cousin, young Belvoir,
Whose dad was a Lancashire welvoir,
Arrived with George Bohun
At just about nohun
When excitement was mounting to felvoir.
The vicar - his surname was Beauchamp -
Of marriage endeavoured to teauchamp,
While the bridesmaid, Miss Marjoribanks,
Played one or two harjoripranks;
But the shoe that she threw failed to reauchamp.
An adventurous pirate named Menzies
Simultaneously boarded two denzies.
The Rover, Sir Ralph,
Said, "Do you think that's salph?
You don't want to damage your thenzies."
The Baron of Fawsley, Lord St John,
Had a fine buckskin coat with a frt john.
He said, "It was guthven
Me by Viscount Ruthven,
Who thinks I'm a cowboy, or t john."
As a youngster Sir Reggie Pole-Carew
Was a cissy, and dubbed the schole-farew.
He fled from Lord Tyrwhitt,
Who dressed as a spyrwhitt,
For he found any ghost or ghole-scarew.
I wonder if the Pole-Carews and the Carew-Poles ever got together?
The virginal Miss Carew-Pole
Was preparing a goosebarew-fole
Inside the cole-darew,
When in came Pole-Carew
And showed her his big harew-tole.
At the art of love no-one could b.,
So he asked her if he could French l.
He gave her a p/o
Crisp notes to take c/o,
And they went to her bedroom. Etc.
A swimming instructor named Porter,
Was instructing his landlady's daughter.
Three times she went down.
Did they fear she would drown?
Not too much - they were not in the water.
A student of Gonville & Caius
Was endowed half-way down to his knaius.
The Chaplain's young wife
Said, "No, not on your life."
But the Chaplain himself said, "Yes, plaius."
A clubman called wick that is Pick,
And a youngster called lebey that's Nick,
Liver Twist that is O,
And pperfield that is Co,
Were created by ens that was Dick.
By way of preamble, an article in a newspaper recently was about Lord Somebody marrying a teacher. She said she was accepted by the family. The article said that his full name is Something-or-Other Leveson Gower, pronounced by the family Loosen Gore. The following limerick was contributed by Ralph Hancock.
A colonel by name Leveson Gower
Mixed tequila and lime jeveson mower
In a drink for Miss Featherstonehaugh
Who said to him, 'Meatherstonehaugh,
This stuff might have some yeveson wower.'
The Caves of Arta
«¡Wellcome, to the Caves of Arta!» Robert Graves
'They are hollowed out in the see-coast at the muncipal terminal of Capdepera at nine kilometer from the town of Arta in the Island of Mallorca, with a stuporizing infinity of graceful colums of 21 meter and by downward, which prives the spectator of all animacion and plunges in dumbness. The way going is very picturesque, serpentine between style mountains, til the arrival at the esplanade of the vallee called «The Spiders». There are good enlacements of the railroad with autobuses of excursion, many days of the week, today actually Wednesday and Satturday. Since many centuries renown foreing visitors have explored them and wrote their elegy about, included Nort-American geoglogues.' [From a tourist guide]
Such subtile filigranity and nobless of construccion
Here fraternise in harmony, that respiracion stops.
While all admit thier impotence (though autors most formidable)
To sing in words the excellence of Nature's underprops,
Yet stalactite and stalagmite together with dumb language
Make hymnes to God wich celebrate the stregnth of water drops.
¿You, also, are you capable to make precise in idiom
Consideracions magic of ilusions very wide?
Already in the Vestibule of these Grand Caves of Arta
The spirit of the human verb is darked and stupefied;
So humildy you trespass trough the forest of the colums
And listen to the grandess explicated by the guide.
From darkness into darkness, but at measure, now descending
You remark with what esxactitude he designates each bent;
«The Saloon of Thousand Banners», or «The Tumba of Napoleon»,
«The Grotto of the Rosary», «The Club», «The Camping Tent»,
And at «Cavern of the Organs» there are knocking strange formacions
Wich give a nois particular pervoking wonderment.
Too far do not adventure, sir! For, further as you wander,
The every of the stalactites will make you stop and stay.
Grand peril amenaces now, your nostrills aprehending
An odour least delicious of lamentable decay.
It is poor touristers, in the depth of obscure cristal,
Wich deceased of thier emocion on a past excursion day.
Buggering About
The Times once published a piece of doggerell that they said was only permitted because it was sent in by so distinguished a contributor, Dane Margaret Cole. It led to one of the biggest correspondences they ever had, with people supplying variants, replies, and guesses at the identities of the protagonists. Terry Pratchett fans will recognise in this the origins of Nanny Ogg's famous Hedgehog Song, too.
Here it is:
Protracted and painful researches
By Darwin and Huxley and Ball
Have conclusively proved that the hedgehog
Can never be buggered at all.
And further protracted researches
Have still more conclusively shown
That comparative safety in Keble
Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.
Apparently the Huxley was T.H., and Darwin was more probably Haldane or Hargreaves, but nobody had the slightest idea who Hall (Ball?) was. That is, everyone had a different guess. Some proposed Harvard rather than Keble for the location, but it turns out that the poem surfaced just after a notable scandal hit Keble in 1913. However, there was an American rejoinder on the lines of
Ingenious Yankee professors
At Harvard and Princeton and Yale
Have overcome the problem by shaving
The spines off the hedgehog's tail.
However, another correspondent noted that
The search carries on unabated
As eminent scientists seek
For a creature so small and so nasty
As to baffle the Cambridge technique.
The whole hedgehog saga was brought to a close by Lord Kennett who said he wrote that with a woman friend at Portland in 1944. Of course on the way various other pieces of erudition popped up, like:
There was a young student of John's
Who was trying to bugger the swans.
'Oh no', said the porter,
'Please take my young daughter.
The swans are reserved for the Dons'.
and this story about Dr Phelps, Provost of Oriel. He was entertaining Lady Astor (a strict teetotaller) . 'My dear', said Phelps. 'Would you take a glass of port with me?' 'Provost', she replied, 'I would as soon commit adultery.' 'My dear', Phelps retorted. 'Who wouldn't ? … who wouldn't ? '
Some addenda on the same subject: The Camel (which tried to bugger the sphinx), which was written by anon in the 1914-18 war. Alan Bold, in The Bawdy Beautiful - the Sphere Book of Improper Verse (Sphere 1979), gives one variant as:
The sexual desires of the camel
Are greater than most people think;
At the height of its sexual season
It must go and try bugger the Sphinx.
But the anal canal of that creature
Is blocked by the sands of the Nile,
Which accounts for the hump of the camel
And the Sphinx's inscrutable smile.
Now recent exhaustive researches,
By Haldane and Huxley and Joad,
Have shown that the camel will bugger
Any beast from a whale to a toad,
Excepting the African hedgehog,
Which Haldane and Huxley have shown
To possess an immunity factor
Which is found in this species alone.