Wednesday, January 13, 2016

And still more limericks


Just after Christmas I posted some limericks, including this one with an explanatory note:

(Wemyss is pronounced “Weems”)

There was a young lady named Wemyss
Who, it seems, was much troubled with dremyss; 
She would wake in the night 
And, in terrible fright, 
Shake the bemyss of the house with her scremyss.

This prompted a response from Robyn Tychsen (Robyn okayed use of her name), whose art work I have previously admired – see:

Robyn commented as follows:
I was interested to see the name Wemyss in one of the limericks in today's Bytes. My father who was born on 5 November 1918 was named Wemyss for the senior British officer who took the surrender from the Germans at the end of WW1. I always thought it a little strange given that both my father's parents were of direct German heritage and indeed his mother's Australian family had to change its surname from Ringke to Ring owing to hostilities to the Germans during WW1. The family pronounced it Waymiss which together with our surname (pronounced Ticksen) was always a handful to explain.
I can only comment:

Robyn said that for the name Wemyss
There is no need for extremyss.
My vocab’s amiss
It should be Waymiss,
Not everything is as it semyss


Some more wordplay limericks:

This limerick goes in reverse
Unless I'm remiss
The neat thing is this:
If you start from the bottom-most verse
This limerick's not any worse.

    - Web cartoonist Zach Weiner

The British wordplay and recreational mathematics expert Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) devised the following mathematical limerick:




This is read as follows:

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.

A mademoiselle named Renee
Would never say nay to a lay.
For sexual action 
Her standard reaction
Was simply to urge “Allez!”

An early psychologist, Freud, 
Had the bluenoses very anneud; 
Saying: "You cannot be rid 
Of the troublesome Id, 
So it might just as well be enjeud!"

A merchant, addressing a debtor, 
Set down in the course of his lebtor: 
"I choose to suppose 
A man owes what he owes, 
And the sooner he pays it, the bebtor!"

There was an old lawyer named Dolan 
Whose income was happily swollen 
By charging huge fees 
For interpreting these: 
The , the - and the : 
[The comma, the dash and the colon.]

And to finish on a bit of philosophy:

If no Pain were, how judge we of pleasure? 
If no work, where's the solace of Leisure? 
What's White, if no Black? 
What's Wealth, if no Lack ? 
If no Loss, how our Gain could we measure?


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