There once was a lass from Manila… - National Review's limerick competition

National Review, May 28, 1990 by John O'Sullivan

THE LIMERICK competition ["From the Editor," April 161 has turned out to be one of NR's more successful ventures. No fewer than 132 limericks were submitted to the judges-Linda Bridges, Allen Randolph, and myself. The sheer bulk of jaunty versification, the repetition of the theme of shoe fetishism, the irrepressible ingenuity of rhymesters faced with "Imelda"-we had to be veritable Stakhanovites of facetiousness to get through it all.

A general criticism must at once be advanced. Many of the entries were not limericks at all, but light verse in a free style. Still more were written by people who had apparently seen the limerick on a printed page and so wrote in broken lines that visually resembled the limerick form. But the lines, when scanned or spoken, were revealed to be rhyming prose.

That said, over half of the entries both showed technical skill and were respectably funny. Some maintained a high standard throughout. But a number had one or two brilliant lines holding up the entire edifice. I do not wish to be overcritical-a good line is hard to find. But in the best limericks every line adds a further twist of wit, such as the tale of Gloria, which I recently saw performed by the late Lord Olivier on television:

There was a young lady called Gloria Who was had by Sir Gerald du Maurier,

Jack Hylton, Jack Payne,

Sir Gerald again,

And the band of the Waldorf Astoria.

It is not necessary to know who Sir Gerald and Jacks Hylton and Payne were to find this funny. The humor is in the arithmetic. There is something of this progressive quality in George Patrick's entry:

I need a hacksaw, " said Imelda,

Surveying the prison that helda.

Or perhaps TNT

Will at last set me free,

Or maybe a torch from a welda."

Now, for the results. Honorable mentions go to May Shaw, who put forth Imelda's legal defense "My six thousand shoes / I wear only by twos'); to David Pittaway, who, needing something to rhyme with the Philippine guerrillas, the Huks, came up with the ingenious Imelda, old Ferdinand's ux; to Simcha Maoz, who was moved to tears by Mrs. Marcos's greatest crime (The torture and murder of Feelings'); to Miles David Moore, whose last line included a neologistic pun "rm a true Philippine Cinderelda'); and to Michael Stein, who gives us this picture of Mrs. Marcos in reduced circumstances:

From pricey French booze And my swank Gucci shoes,

They've reduced me to reruns of

Dallas.

That left us with six entries jostling for the top spot. The judges felt that, given this intense competition, it would be unseemly to allow the entry from our own W. H. von Dreele, but that posterity should not be deprived of his opening lines:

Mrs. Marcos, whose mountains of shoes

Make the moralists mutter, "J' accuse. - The five runners-up were all of such a standard that we felt an honorable mention would be insufficient reward. Five bottles of domestic champagne are therefore awarded, first to Mr. Patrick, then to Mrs. W. A. Chapman, whose entry (one of five) is a brilliant disquisition on nothing at all:

Imelda, Imelda, Imelda, Not Sally, Leona, or Zelda, You're one of a kind,

No peer comes to mind, In awe and amazement I've held ya.

William B. Kinslow Jr., who submitted two entries, had a nice internal rhyme (as, did Mark Sadd, to whom an honorable mention). Mr. Kinslow depicted Mrs. Marcos as playing political advisor to Cory Aquino:

Wear yellow, act mellow, Be a jolly good fellow, And Congress will keep you afloat.

Two of Dick Hainsworth's entries put him among the runners-up. (But he gets only one bottle of champagne.) A toss of the coin persuaded us to overlook the pun and quote this one:

They say she was badly behaved, Just vicious, ambitious, depraved, But now she's a widder

You have to consider The thousands of soles that she saved.

The last runner-up is Wm. F. Rickenbacker. Of his two limericks, the judges preferred this one (Bob McKenty gets an honorable mention for a similar last line):

"'Twas all a mistake," said Dame Marcos,

Whose wardrobe could dress Ringling's sarcus.

When I married him, see, I believed that he

Was some kin of Big D's NeimanMarcus."

Mr. Rickenbacker might have made it to the final if his fourth line had not been metrically ugly-an anapest followed by an iamb, rather than the other way around. We would have preferred, for instance, the verb conjectured," yielding two anapests. Mr. Rickenbacker was the literary curmudgeon who in our last issue listed our recent errors of taste, grammar, and punctuation. God is not mocked.

WHICH brings me finally to the winner. Barbara Russell attorney at law of Pittsburgh, challenges our most deeply held assumptions with the following pro-Imelda entry:

I bought jewelry and clothes mucho fino,

Not with money I won playing Keno. But when Ferdy held sway U.S. bases could stay.

Are you happier now with Aquino? My congratulations to Miss Russell. A bottle of Bolhnger is even now speeding toward Pittsburgh.

Several contestants sent in nonImelda limericks, not necessarily their own, to amuse the editors. In this unexpected category, we liked Eugene Watson's submission of the tale, from the 1930s Italian invasion of Abyssinia, of the young maid of Adowa, seemingly a sweet Ethiopian flower, who, according to rumor, couldn't say "Oh, no" to Marshal de Bono, and consequently delayed the attack by an hour. (Now, work it out.) But our favorite was the entry of the Rev. Benjamin Moss, who submitted this limerick of his own composition: