Competition | 19 June 2010

In Competition No. 2651 you were invited to submit limericks that are also tongue-twisters.

Thanks to J. Seery for suggesting this fiendish assignment. It is not easy to produce a true tongue-twister within the confines of the meter and rhyme scheme of the limerick.

Perhaps the suggestion was inspired by Lou Brooks’s Twimericks: The Book of Tongue-Twisting Limericks, which I happen to have been reading to my young son. He finds my pitiful attempts at articulating ‘Flapjack Jack flipped flat flapjacks at Phil’ hilarious, but ‘Flapjack Jack’ is a piece of cake compared with some of your offerings. Gillian Ewing, Jane Dards and Virginia Price-Evans all reduced me to lisping incoherence.

The quirky, comical and fluency-defying best of the bunch are printed below. They earn their authors £9 apiece.

On Scafell Serena saw sheep
And summed them to send her to sleep:
    She said to them ‘Shoo!’
    Should her snooze then ensue?
No, the sheep found the slope slightly steep.
Bill Greenwell

A chanteuse called Shona from Sheen
wore shell suits of sequinned shagreen;
    some slow chansons simmered,
    some sinfully shimmered,
and her shows score as semi-obscene.

Three thieves thought they’d thrive in Tibet;
they were thrusting, stout-thighed and thickset.
    But threatening Tibetans
    with shrapnel and trepans
earns a thrashing they’ll henceforth regret.
D.A. Prince
 
A beefy police chief from Leith
Had as chief brief to seize a sheep thief
    But the sheep were now pies
    Chops, steaks, giblets and eyes,
Thus that sheep thief deceived the Leith chief
Shirley Curran

When slick Mick mocks Max, Max mocks Mick,
To mock makes the two of them tick.
    Though it’s trivial and trite
    And a mite impolite
Mindless mocking makes Mick and Max click.
Alan Millard

Surely, spikey Steve’s scarcely inert,
Sat sharp in his smart shark skin shirt,
    He swaps trendy twill trousers,
    (such potent arousers)
At nights, with a slinky silk skirt.