There once was a man from Nantucket

"There once was a man from Nantucket" is the opening line for many limericks. The popularity of this literary trope can be attributed to the way the name of the island of Nantucket lends itself easily to humorous rhymes and puns, particularly ribald ones. In the many vulgar versions, the protagonist is typically portrayed as a well-hung, hypersexualized persona.

History

The earliest published version appeared in 1902 in the Princeton Tiger:^[1][2][3]

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

    But his daughter, named Nan,

    Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

Other publications seized upon the "Nantucket" motif, spawning many sequels. Of these, perhaps the two most famous^[4][5] appeared, respectively, in the Chicago Tribune and the New York Press:

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,

The man and the girl with the bucket;

    And he said to the man,

    He was welcome to Nan,

But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,

Where he still held the cash as an asset;

    But Nan and the man

    Stole the money and ran,

And as for the bucket, Manhasset.

Obscene versions

The many ribald versions of the limerick are the basis for its lasting popularity. Many variations on the theme are possible because of the ease of rhyming Nantucket with certain vulgar phrases. The following example comes from Immortalia: An Anthology of American Ballads, Sailors' Songs, Cowboy Songs, College Songs, Parodies, Limericks, and other humorous verses and doggerel, published in 1927.^[6]

There once was a man from Nantucket

Whose dick was so long he could suck it.

    And he said with a grin

    As he wiped off his chin,

"If my ear were a cunt, I would fuck it."

In popular culture

The poem has become a staple of American humor, both as an iconic example of dirty poetry and as a joking example of fine art, whose vulgarity and simple form provides an unexpected contrast to an expected refinement.

A few examples: In Woody Allen's 1966 film What's Up, Tiger Lily?, the protagonist Phil Moskowitz reads the opening line of "ancient erotic poetry": "There once was a man from Nantucket". In Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film Solaris, the male protagonist tries to impress his girlfriend with his knowledge of poet Dylan Thomas, but when she asks him for his favorite poem he comes up with "the one he is most famous for, which starts, um, 'There once was a young man from Nantucket'". On the television show Laverne and Shirley, Laverne often started the poem, but was always stopped after the first line.

In his Below the Beltway column of July 11, 2010 for the Washington Post Magazine, humor writer Gene Weingarten recast this limerick as an Elizabethan Sonnet.^[7]

In SpongeBob SquarePants season 8 episode 157a, SpongeBob is preparing for an opera and pulls out a note with "There once was a man from Nantucket..." written on it. He proceeds to read it to a crowd who gasps before he corrects his error.

In the pilot episode of the TV series Babylon 5, The Gathering, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair notes to Ambassador Delenn about his like for poetry. She asks "Poetry?". Sinclair describes it as a metrical verse. She responds, "Ah. There Once was a Man from Nantucket."

Notes

1. ^ Life, Volume 41, page 274
2. ^ In transit, Volume 11, Issue 2, page 18
3. ^ Princeton Tiger, November 1902, page 59
4. ^ Baring-Gould, William S.. The Lure of the Limerick. pp. 246. ISBN 0517538563. 
5. ^ http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/456/how-does-the-limerick-there-was-an-old-man-of-nantucket-conclude
6. ^ http://www.poetry-nut.com/genitals.htm
7. ^ Weingarten, Gene (July 11, 2010). "Rhymin' sly man: If Shakespeare had worked the Catskills". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070204169.html. 

References

• Yesterday's Island "Limerick Challenge"
• Little Blue Book, number 1018. "A Book of Humorous Limericks". pp. 40–41

External links

• Ten variants of the limerick from Life Magazine, 1903
• Several modern variants