Some Limericks E-Book

Norman Douglas

• Herausgeber: Olympia Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Collection of limericks by author Douglas, famed for his “South Wind” in an earlier era.

Das E-Book Some Limericks wird angeboten von Olympia Press und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
Poetry, Satire, Culture, Limericks

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Some Limericks

Some Limericks

Norman Douglas

     This page copyright © 2006 Olympia Press.

      http://www.olympiapress.com

     Norman Douglas was 60 when he first offered this delightful collection—the result of a lifetime of assiduous research—in a privately printed edition. Anthologies of limericks are many, but this one, like a good wine, is rare indeed.

     It was during the reign of Queen Victoria, according to Douglas, that this fine art achieved its greatest successes, and it is from this era that most of the choices in this volume come, though some from the '20s and an American sampling are also included. As important as the limericks themselves are Douglas's witty, pungent notes which follow each selection.

     “He must be a quintessential fool who does not realize that the following fifty limericks are a document of enduring value,” writes Norman Douglas in his Introduction to this urbane and often hilarious collection. “I may be abused on the ground that the pieces are coarse, obscene, and so forth. Why, so they are; and whoever suffers from that trying form of degeneracy which is horrified by coarseness had better close the book at once.... At the same time I am convinced that nobody under the age of ten should peruse these pages, since he would find them so obscure in places that he might be discouraged from taking up the subject later on, which would be a pity. Ten, and not before, is the right age to commence similar studies.... Ten was the precise age at which I began to take an interest in this class of literature, and it has done me all the good in the world.”

           Collected for the use of Students, & ensplendour'd with Introduction, and with Notes Explanatory and Critical

     TO THE UNKNOWN POET

     He must be a quintessential fool who does not realize that the following fifty limericks are a document of enduring value. And I beg leave to say that the collection has been made not for such people, but for those who can appreciate its significance.

     I may be abused on the ground that the pieces are coarse, obscene, and so forth. Why, so they are; and whoever suffers from that trying form of degeneracy which is horrified at coarseness had better close the book at once and send it back to me, in the hope that I may be simple enough to refund him the money. As to abuse—I thrive on it. Abuse, hearty abuse, is a tonic to all save men of indifferent health. At the same time I am fully convinced that nobody under the age of ten should peruse these pages, since he would find them so obscure in places that he might be discouraged from taking up the subject later on, which would be a pity. Ten, and not before, is the right age to commence similar studies; a boy of ten is as sagacious and profound as one of eighteen, and often more intellectual. Ten was the precise age (see page 35 ) at which I began to take interest in this class of literature, and it has done me all the good in the world.

     There was a time when one collected butterflies, or flowers, or minerals. But the choicest specimen of (say) precious opal can be replaced, if lost. Now if these limericks are lost, they cannot be replaced; they are gone for good. You may invent new ones, as many as you please. Such new ones, however, will inevitably have another tone, another aroma, because they belong to another age. The discerning critic will detect a gulf both in technique and in feeling between most of the limericks of the Golden Period and those of today, and naturally enough, seeing that the poets, and not only the poets of the Victorian and the Georgian epochs have an entirely different outlook. Precious opal remains the same yesterday, today, and fifty thousand years hence.

     That is why lately, with increasing intelligence, I have taken to garnering what future collectors cannot hope to possess without my aid—perishable material such as the Street Games of London children, or the blasphemies of Florentine coachmen. It would interest me to know what proportion of those thousand-odd Street Games are still played, and which of them have died out in the short interval since my little book on the subject was written. In that book itself I predict their decline, and give reasons for it (page 119-121). And it is the same with the swear words. I caught the old ones in the nick of time. A good half of them have already grown obsolete and are unfamiliar to the new generation of such men. Why is this? Because these men, being no longer cab-drivers but chauffeurs, are afflicted with the neurasthenia common to all such mechanical folk; they lack—their distemper makes them imagine they lack—the leisure which is essential to the creation of original works of art, however humble; they forget the ripe old blasphemies and have not the wit to invent a fresh supply. How shall good things be generated if, instead of sitting over your wine and cheese, you gulp down a thimbleful of black coffee and rush off again? Mechanics, not microbes, are the menace to civilization.

     A writer in the New Witness (Dec. 9, 1921) once suggested that this collection of swear words should be privately printed. That cannot be done; it will never see the light of day. But I shall now permit myself, for reasons which will be apparent later on, to reproduce the few words of introduction which I wrote for it in the year 1917:

            “Nor is there much bad language to be found in Romola. Perhaps the Florentines did not swear so horribly in those days. Perhaps their present fondness for impious invective is likewise a reaction from Savonarola's teaching (I had been discussing Savonarola's puritanism). For Tuscans of today are pretty good blasphemers. They have many oaths in common but, unlike others, they pride themselves upon an individual tone in this department. A self-respecting Florentine would consider his life ill-spent had he not tried to add at least one blasphemy of his own personal composition to the city stock; it survives, or not, according to its merits. Of how many other art-products can it be said that merit, and merit alone, decides their survival?

     “Adventures are to be adventurous.

     “I have begun to make a collection of these curses, imprecations, objurgations—abusive, vituperative or blasphemous expletives: swear words, in short. It already numbers thirty-eight specimens, all authentic, to the best of my knowledge. Most of them, I regret to say, are coupled with the name of the Deity. That cannot be helped. I propose to treat the subject in a scientific spirit —from the “kulturhistorischen Standpunkt", as the Germans say. I did not invent the swear words, and if the reader dislikes their tone he may blame not me but Savonarola for generating this pungent reaction from his bigotry. Violence always begets violence.

     “Why not interest oneself in such things? Man cannot live without a hobby. And this is folklore, neither more nor less; an honorable hobby. Furthermore, unlike stamp or coin collecting, it costs practically nothing; a seasonable one. It has the additional advantage that the field is virgin soil and the supply of material very considerable —unlimited, I should say; Moreover, the research leads you into strange byways of thought and causes you to ponder deeply concerning human nature; some of these oaths require a deal of explanation; a philosopher's hobby! Unexploited, unexplained, unexhaustible—what more can be asked? And, as aforesaid, absurdly economical.

     “There is yet more to be said in its favour. For while these swear words are as genuine a flower of the soil as Dante or Donatello and every bit as characteristic, they happen to be up to date. A live hobby! They portray modern Tuscany with greater truthfulness than any other local product. Indeed, it will not take you long to discover that they, and they alone, are still flourishing in this city. For the rest of Florence is dead or dying. The town decays, declines; it shrinks into a village; grows more provincial every day. Political life has yielded up the ghost; art and literature and science, music and the state—they gasp for breath. There is no onward movement perceptible. It either stands still, or moves actually backwards. The oaths alone are vital. In lightning flashes, and with terrible candour, they reveal the genius loci.”

            Are not these words, most of them, applicable to a collection of English limericks? A curious parallel! “A self-respecting Englishman would consider his life ill-spent had he not tried to add at least one limerick of his own personal composition to the national stock; it survives, or not, according to its merits”—how true!

     And what shall we write instead of Savonarola? We can write puritanism; indeed, we must This verse-form is a belated product of puritanical repression. That is why Latin races cannot appreciate such literature. If you tell a Frenchman:

            Il y avait un jeune homme de Dijon,

     Qui n'avait que peu de religion.

     Il dit: “Quant a moi,

     Je deteste tous les trois,

     Le Pere, et le Fils, et le Pigeon”—

            he will look at you in a dazed fashion, wondering whether he has heard aright, while Spaniards are positively shocked when you translate for them a lyric such as:

            There was a young girl of Spitzbergen,

     Whose people all thought her a virgin,

     Till they found her in bed,

     With her quim very red,

     And the head of a kid just emergin'.

            They regard these things as dirty. Now tell them that all such “dirt" is the outcome of protestant theories of life, and that the poets of the Restoration expressed the same [...]