After nursery rhymes, limericks are often the first poems that kids learn, and with good reason – they’re short, funny, and usually appealingly irreverent. Nobody really knows for sure who wrote the first limerick or why the rhymes share their name with the city in Ireland, but the first examples of limericks as we know them date back to 19th century England. The form itself is probably much older than that, and historians have traced its roots to funny, and often dirty, songs sung in 15th and 16th century pubs. One thing’s for sure: limericks are always a good time, and great for a sure-fire (and sometimes racy!) laugh. There once was a man from Nantucket…
