There once was a man from Nantucket

Last updated

"There once was a man from Nantucket" is the opening line for many limericks, in which the name of the island of Nantucket creates often ribald rhymes and puns. The protagonist in the obscene versions is typically portrayed as well-endowed and hypersexualized. The opening line is so well known that it has been used as a stand-alone joke, implying upcoming obscenities.

Contents

History

The earliest published version appeared in 1879 in The Pearl, Volume 3 (September 1879 [1] ):

There was a young man of Nantucket.
Who went down a well in a bucket;
The last words he spoke.
Before the rope broke,
Were, "Arsehole, you bugger, and suck it."

Another early published version appeared in 1902 in the Princeton Tiger written by Prof. Dayton Voorhees: [2] [3] [4]

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. [5] [6]

Among the best-known are:

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.

Followed later by:

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.

Ribald 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. [7] [8]

There was a young man from Nantucket
Whose dick was so long he could suck it.
  He said with a grin
  As he wiped off his chin,
"If my ear was a cunt I would fuck it."

The poem has become a staple of American humor. It is often used as a joking example of fine art, with the vulgarity providing a surprising contrast to an expected refinement, such as in the 2002 film Solaris , when George Clooney's character mentions that his favorite poem is the most famous poem by Dylan Thomas that starts with "There was a young man from Nantucket"; or Will & Grace season 8 episode 3 ("The Old Man and the Sea"), in which Grace criticizes her date's poem due to the lack of rhymes, and as an example, she recites the first two lines of the ribald version: "There once was a man from Nantucket... Something something something... Suck it."

Many jokes assume the audience knows the poem so well that they do not need to hear any actual lines to get the allusion, such as Gilmore Girls season 3 episode 8, when Lorelai Gilmore jokes about carving something dirty into a bathroom wall by saying "What rhymes with Nantucket?"; in Who's the Boss season 5 episode 23, there is talk about poetry class and Tony says about Angela "...last time she heard her name mentioned in a poem, it started with "There once was a man from Nantucket"..."; in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Wheel O' Comedy" when Babs Bunny asks Buster Bunny to say the magic chant before spinning the wheel, to which Buster begins reciting: "There once was a girl from Nantucket..." before she quickly cuts him off with: "Not that chant!" [9] or a sketch from the eighth season episode of Robot Chicken titled "Not Enough Women", when J. R. R. Tolkien, writing the opening of the book The Hobbit , comes up with the line, "In a hole of Middle-earth, there was found a Hobbit... whose dick was so long, he could slob it." The fifth season episode of The Simpsons titled "Deep Space Homer" features a gag where Homer begins to recite the limerick while performing cartwheels in the NASA training gymnasium, but can only finish the first line before he collides with a wall. The 2012 Gravity Falls episode "Headhunters" features the line, "There once was a dude from Kentucky..." Broadcast Standards and Practices requested that the line be changed from “There once was a man from Kentucky”, which retained the sentence structure of the original limerick, arguing that "unsavory rhymes could be gleaned from it." [10] [11] In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants however, SpongeBob, while preparing to recite an opera song, pulls out a piece of paper and reads, "There once was a man from Nantucket..." before the audience gasps in shock; he puts the paper back into his pocket, saying "Oops, wrong one", and afterward continuing with his song.

Frasier Crane, in the Frasier episode "The Botched Language of Cranes", [12] is eager to find some humor to break the ice as he takes the role of host at a high-stakes church fundraiser that he hopes can repair his damaged reputation. Frustrated at drawing a mental blank, he quips ironically, "Why don't I call Bulldog and ask him for a couple of limericks from his Nantucket series?"

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casey at the Bat</span> 1888 baseball poem by Ernest Thayer

"Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888" is a mock-heroic poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. It was first published anonymously in The San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1888, under the pen name "Phin", based on Thayer's college nickname, "Phinney". Featuring a dramatic narrative about a baseball game, the poem was later popularized by DeWolf Hopper in many vaudeville performances. It has become one of the best-known poems in American literature.

<i>Frasier</i> American television sitcom (1993–2004)

Frasier is an American television sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for 11 seasons from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee, in association with Grammnet (2004) and Paramount Television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Limerick (poetry)</span> Form of poetry

A limerick is a form of verse that appeared in Limerick, County Limerick, Ireland in the early years of the 18th century. In combination with a refrain, it forms a limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses. It is written in five-line, predominantly anapestic and amphibrach trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different rhyme.

Poetry analysis is the process of investigating the form of a poem, content, structural semiotics, and history in an informed way, with the aim of heightening one's own and others' understanding and appreciation of the work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eeny, meeny, miny, moe</span> Childrens counting-out rhyme

"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" – which can be spelled a number of ways – is a children's counting-out rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag, or for selecting various other things. It is one of a large group of similar rhymes in which the child who is pointed to by the chanter on the last syllable is chosen. The rhyme has existed in various forms since well before 1820 and is common in many languages using similar-sounding nonsense syllables. Some versions use a racial slur, which has made the rhyme controversial at times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frasier Crane</span> Fictional character in the television series Frasier and Cheers

Dr. Frasier Winslow Crane is a fictional character who is both a supporting character on the American television sitcom Cheers and the titular protagonist of its spin-off Frasier and the latter’s 2023 sequel. In all three series, he is portrayed by Kelsey Grammer. The character debuted in the Cheers third-season premiere, "Rebound " (1984), as Diane Chambers's love interest, part of the Sam and Diane story arc. Intended to appear for only a few episodes, Grammer's performance in the role was praised by producers, prompting them to expand his role and increase his prominence.

<i>Wings</i> (1990 TV series) American television sitcom (1990–1997)

Wings is an American television sitcom that ran for eight seasons on NBC from April 19, 1990, to May 21, 1997, for a total of 172 episodes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niles Crane</span> Fictional character on the American television sitcom Frasier

Niles Crane is a fictional character on the American sitcom Frasier, a spin-off of the television show Cheers. He was portrayed by David Hyde Pierce. Niles is the younger brother of Frasier Crane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late</span> Poem in The Lord of the Rings

"The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" is J. R. R. Tolkien's imagined original song behind the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle ", invented by back-formation. It was first published in Yorkshire Poetry magazine in 1923, and was reused in extended form in the 1954–55 The Lord of the Rings as a song sung by Frodo Baggins in the Prancing Pony inn. The extended version was republished in the 1962 collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Martin Crane is a fictional character from the American television show Frasier, and was played by John Mahoney. An army veteran and retired police detective, he is the father of Frasier and Niles Crane.

Chastushka is a traditional type of short Russian humorous folk song with high beat frequency, that consists of one four-lined couplet, full of humor, satire or irony. It may be described as "ditty". The term "chastushki" was first used by Gleb Uspensky in his book about Russian folk rhymes published 1889. Usually many chastushki are sung one after another. Chastushki make use of a simple rhyming scheme to convey humorous or ironic content. The singing and recitation of such rhymes were an important part of peasant popular culture both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

<i>The Circus of Dr. Lao</i> 1935 novel by Charles G. Finney

The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) is a novel written by the American newspaperman and writer Charles G. Finney. It won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: The Most Original Book of 1935. Although the first edition was illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff, many later editions omit the illustrations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woody Boyd</span> Fictional character in the series Cheers

Woodrow Huckleberry Tiberius Boyd is a fictional character on the American television show Cheers, portrayed by Woody Harrelson. Woody, simple-minded but good-hearted, debuts in the season premiere of the fourth season, "Birth, Death, Love and Rice". He also appears one-time in a Frasier episode "The Show Where Woody Shows Up".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brother from Another Series</span> 16th episode of the 8th season of The Simpsons

"Brother from Another Series" is the sixteenth episode of the eighth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 23, 1997. Sideshow Bob is released from prison after his arrest in "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" into the care of his brother Cecil and claims to be a changed man. However, Bart does not believe him and tries to find out what Bob is up to. It was the first episode directed by Pete Michels and was written by Ken Keeler. The episode guest stars Kelsey Grammer in his sixth appearance as Sideshow Bob and David Hyde Pierce in his first appearance as Cecil. The title is not only a pun on the movie The Brother from Another Planet, but for the fact that guest stars Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce also played bickering brothers Frasier Crane and Niles Crane, respectively, on the NBC sitcom Frasier.

Sonnet 29 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence. In the sonnet, the speaker bemoans his status as an outcast and failure but feels better upon thinking of his beloved. Sonnet 29 is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a rhymed couplet.

"Good Ship Venus", also known as "Friggin' in the Riggin", is a bawdy drinking song devised to shock with ever increasingly lewd and debauched sexual descriptions of the eponymous ship's loose-moralled crew. The tune usually used is "Go In and Out the Window".

"Limerick" is a traditional humorous drinking song with many obscene verses. The tune usually used for sung limericks is traditionally "Cielito Lindo," with the words arranged in the form of a limerick.

<i>The Bad Book</i> Collected stories by Andy Griffiths

The Bad Book is a 2004 book by Andy Griffiths, who wrote the novel The Day My Bum Went Psycho, with Terry Denton, who also did the illustrations. It is a compilation of stories, drawings, rhymes and poems about such quirky characters like 'Bad Baby', and 'Bad Daddy' doing such bad things like miss-throwing knives, and blowing up objects and people at Christmas. It was followed by The Very Bad Book (2010) and The Super Bad Book (2011)

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert W. Service</span> British-Canadian poet and writer (1874–1958)

Robert William Service was a Scottish-Canadian poet and writer, often called “The Poet of the Yukon" and "The Canadian Kipling". Born in Lancashire of Scottish descent, he was a bank clerk by trade, but spent long periods travelling in the west in the United States and Canada, often in poverty. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which showed remarkable authenticity from an author with no experience of the gold rush or mining, and enjoyed immediate popularity. Encouraged by this, he quickly wrote more poems on the same theme, which were published as Songs of a Sourdough, and achieved a massive sale. When his next collection, Ballads of a Cheechako, proved equally successful, Service could afford to travel widely and live a leisurely life, basing himself in Paris and the French Riviera.

References

  1. ↑ Vice, Printed for the Society of. The Pearl.
  2. ↑ "Nan's Adventures Up to Date". Life. Vol. 41. March 26, 1903. p. 274. Retrieved March 6, 2012– via Google Books.
  3. ↑ "There once was a man from Nantucket from In Transit". In Transit. Vol. 11, no. 2. p. 18.[ full citation needed ]
  4. ↑ "There once was a man from Nantucket from Princeton Tiger". Princeton Tiger. November 1902. p. 59.[ full citation needed ]
  5. ↑ Baring-Gould, William S. (1979). The Lure of the Limerick. p. 246. ISBN   978-0-517-53856-2.[ full citation needed ]
  6. ↑ Adams, Cecil (March 8, 1985). "How does the limerick 'There was an old man of Nantucket ...' conclude?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved March 6, 2012.
  7. ↑ Anonymous (1927). Immortalia: An Anthology of American Ballads, Sailors' Songs, Cowboy Songs, College Songs, Parodies, Limericks, and Other Humorous Verses and Doggerel. Library of Alexandria. Limericks XXI. ISBN   978-1-4655-3313-5.
  8. ↑ "10 "Nantucket" Limericks (R)". Michael R. Bissell. Archived from the original on June 29, 2018. Retrieved January 10, 2019– via michaelbissell.com.
  9. ↑ "The Wheel O' Comedy (1990): Quotes". Tiny Toon Adventures – via IMDb.
  10. ↑ Carr, Mary Kate (16 June 2022). "Gravity Falls creator shares wild list of revision requests he reportedly received from Disney". The A.V. Club . Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  11. ↑ Lang, Jamie (17 June 2022). "'Gravity Falls' Creator Alex Hirsch Shares Words To Avoid At Disney, Including Hoo-ha, Chub, And Lucifer". Cartoon Brew . Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  12. ↑ ""The Botched Language of Cranes" (1995): Quotes". Frasier – via IMDb.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.