According to James A H Murray, founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Limerick has long been associated with nonsense verse and the Irish custom of drinking and reciting poems.

This Irish pub ritual ended with the participants reciting the refrain ‘Will you go down to Limerick?’ Hence the name of these five line often naughty rhymes.

Edward Lear made the form famous and was considered a master of the form with such verses as: There was an old man with a beard Who said, “It’s just as I feared! Two owls and a hen, Four larks and a wren Are making a nest in my beard!”