The only three limericks I find amusing, apart from Lear's

I hate limericks - so unfunny - and hate dirty jokes ditto - but I enjoy these three even though they are risqué, or were when they were written very long ago:


Whenever a fellow named Rex, 

Flashed his very small organ of sex,

He always got off,

For the judges would scoff,

De minimis non curat lex.

There was a young girl of East Anglia
Whose loins were a tangle of ganglia.
Her mind was a webbing
Of Freud and Kraft-Ebing 
And all sorts of other new-fanglia.

There was a young lady named Gloria
Who slept with Sir Gerald du Maurier,
Then with six other men,
Sir Gerald (again),
And the band at the Waldorf-Astoria.


I am a passionate believer in annotating books in ink and interestingly I notice that a volume of Lear's limericks which belonged to the comedian Ronnie Barker is being (or has been) auctioned complete with his manuscript improvements. 



Barker wrote as an introduction:

There was an old fossil named Lear,

Who's verses were boring and drear. 

His last lines were worst - just the same as the first! 

So I've tried to improve on them here.

Lear wrote:

There was an Old Man of the Dee,
Who was sadly annoyed by a flea;
When he said 'I will scratch it',
They gave him a hatchet,
Which grieved that Old Man of the Dee.

Barker altered the final line to read, "and cut his leg off at the knee." 

He finally seems to have given up on Lear:

There was a Young Lady of Clare,

Who was sadly pursued by a bear,

When she found she was tired,

She abruptly expired,

And so do these rhymes - in despair!"'

Of course I take Barker's point but I think Edward Lear's limericks have a surreal poignant charm that other limericks cannot match. The sad beauty of childhood.