Mae Peter am sefyll yn Blaina
er fod'i salwch yn faich ar gynllunia (ffacin gogs )
Angen tynnu Cymru Ymlaen
Nid yn ol fel can rhai
Ond cadwa Ron bant o'r moch daear!
Ie ie, fi'n gwbo, bag of shite. Ond ma ishe dechre rhywle
Cymedrolwr: Llewelyn Richards
PART ONE
BASIC RULES AND DEFINITIONS
Rhyme Scheme
Limerick must have five lines with aabba rhyme scheme. This much is well known.
Rhythm
The beat must be anapestic (weak, weak, strong) with three feet in lines 1, 2, and 5 and 2 feet in lines 3 and 4. This will be explained further below. However the following exceptions are allowed:
The first foot of an line may have only one weak beat in front of the strong beat.
Trailing weak beats that continue the rhyme are allowed at the end of the each line. Naturally these sounds must be identical over rhyming lines.
The following covers most cases, where S equals a strong beat, w indicates a weak beat, and the brackets indicate that the beat is optional. Note that on the same line, different strong beats are always separated by exactly two weak beats. The options apply only to the leading and trailing beats.
Lines 1,2,5: w [w] S w w S w w S [w] [w]
Lines 3,4: w [w] S w w S [w] [w]
Restriction on Rhyming Beats.
The last strong beats in the lines must rhyme (125 and 34) and the any weak beats at the end must match and must have the same sound over rhyming lines. Limericks with two weak beats at the end are less common than those with one or none. In poetry books, single beat rhymes are called masculine rhymes; two-beat rhymes are called feminine rhymes. A combination of wwS is called an anapest; a combination wS is called an iamb.
Beginning weak beats
Note that each line can start with either one or two weak beats. Various writers have proposed special restrictions (such as requiring just one weak beat at the start of lines one and two, or requiring matching the initial number of weak beats over certain lines), but all such restrictions fail the empirical test of describing what good anthologies and recognized masters have produced.
Examples:
Following are some well-known limericks with beat patterns laid out.
There was a young lady from Niger. (w S w w S w w S w)
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger. (w S w w S w w S w)
They returned from the ride (w w S w w S)
With the lady inside, (w w S w w S)
And the smile on the face of the tiger. (w w S w w S w w S w)
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There was a young lady from Kent (w S w w S w w S)
Who said that she knew what it meant (w S w w S w w S)
When men asked her to dine, (w w S w w S)
Gave her cocktails and wine. (w w S w w S)
She knew what it meant but she went. (w S w w S w w S)
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There was a young man of Oporta (w S w w S w w S w)
Who daily got shorter and shorter. (w S w w S w w S w)
The reason, he said, (w S w w S)
Was the hod on his head, (w w S w w S)
Which was filled with the heaviest mortar. (w w S w w S w w S w)
(C.L. Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll)
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As a beauty, I'm not a great star. (w w S w w S w w S)
There are others more handsome by far. (w w S w w S w w S)
But my face, I don't mind it, (w w S w w S w)
Because I'm behind it. (w S w w S w)
Tis the folks in the front that I jar. (w w S w w S w w S)
(Anthony Euwer)
Defnyddwyr sy’n pori’r seiat hon: Dim defnyddwyr cofrestredig a 4 gwestai