A shocking young punster from Enfield

[j4]

At some point during the mildly-hungover post-fryup party-recovery session on Sunday morning, a new game was invented (or perhaps I should say perpetrated) by hairyears and aardvark179 (I can't remember precisely where to lay the blame, which is probably for the best), ably aided and abetted by covertmusic, fivemack, taimatsu, addedentry and me. What is this new jeu du jour?

Oxbridge limericks.

It's not an aimless or endless meme: unusually, it's a meme with a publishable goal. The aim is to come up with limericks for each of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Most of the examples so far have been scurrilous in the extreme; I offer this most recent contribution phoned in (well, txted in) by hairyears as an exemplar:

The delicate dons of St Hilda's
Were shocked by the bill from the builda's
They charged for the water,
The bricks and the mortar,
And labour, replacing the dilda's.

The only rule over and above those dictated by the form is that the limerick must use the name of the college as the primary rhyme (commonly used shortened forms are acceptable, e.g. "Catz" for St Catherine's).

The ultimate aim is to create two full sets of limericks for each university's colleges: one 'clean' (if you could tell it to your mum -- no, not Your Mum -- then it's probably fine) and one, er, not (see e.g. above). We'll collect the best ones (all entries will be subjected to rigorous peer-review through the media of LJ polls and shouting) and hopefully put them together into something on paper that people can keep (think of this as the Viz to Pocketful of Lies' LRB).

For the time being, just post your limericks as comments here or in your own journal with the tag 'oxbridgelimericks'; in time I may be able to find a better home for them, but I don't want to delay the fun because of boring information management issues. Examples have already been sighted in the wild; it's possible that we may be seeing the start of a limerick pandemic (popularly known as 'rhyme flu').

Go forth and versify!

Comments

A collective effort from the Gallerians

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

There was a young don at All Souls',
Who wanted to fill all her holes.
Her most popular stunt
Involved only one punt,
But the use of at least seven poles.

[simont]

That's reminding me, actually, that drswirly once related a limerick to me that someone apparently recited at a Corpus formal dinner, which would probably go straight into this collection. It was along the lines, if I recall rightly, of:

There was a young lady from Girton
Who went for a punt with no skirt on
The pole of the punt
[we're recording tonight so I have to leave this line out]
And her equipoise went for a Burton.

As I recall Gareth's telling, the fourth line was carefully timed to be drowned out by the laugh as the audience figured out what it would be.