Special reduction

In Competition No. 2416 you were invited to reduce the life story of a famous person or a fictional character to three limericks.

I was strict about metre and rhyme. A limerick is technically a very conventional form of poetry, and so when my ear was offended I turned my thumb down. And I was certainly not going to countenance ‘neuralgia’ rhyming with ‘Trafalgar’! A third criterion was the necessary biographical element demanded by ‘life story’. Iain Crawford wrote tellingly about John Lennon, but spleen overwhelmed history. Commendations to him, Bernadette Evans, Brian Murdoch and Dominica Roberts. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver is Colin Sydenham’s.

At his birth he was maimed and then spurned,
But soon saved and adopted. He learned
He was fated to slay
His papa; straightaway
His face from his homeland he turned.

On the road an old toff made a scene,
So he casually topped the has-been,
Then freed Thebes of her jinx
By outsmarting the Sphinx;
His reward was the hand of the queen.

But destiny none can avoid,
The denouement our hero destroyed:
For the toff was his pa,
The queen his mamma.
His tale was a godsend to Freud.
Colin Sydenham

From the days of his studious youth
Sherlock Holmes was the ultimate sleuth,
An eccentric, unique
Kind of genius geek
Analytically hunting the truth.

‘The game’s afoot, Watson!’ he’d hoot.
‘Fetch down Bradshaw and find us a route.’
No assassin or thief
Stood a chance of relief
With the doctor and Holmes in pursuit.

Holmes brought to unequalled perfection
The whole science and art of detection,
And though tragically drowned
Was predictably bound
To be granted a swift resurrection.
G.M. Davis

The elegant Mrs Karenin
Encounters her destiny when in
A station, and fails
To stay on the rails
(No wife should admit other men in).
One Vronsky, a handsome young captain,
She soon becomes fatally wrapped in;
A shocking affair
Of love and despair,
Which Vronsky begins to feel trapped in.

His