But traces of guilt Tainted the life that they’d built Using money they’d stole from her dad And before long she saw the man was a cad So her heart then took a new tilt. I may be opposed to profanity, but there was good reason why I had never heard or read the limerick until today. 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. You can read it for yourself on Wikipedia, but if you are easily offended, you might be better off remaining as blissfully unaware as I was until about five minutes ago. It must have taken pluck, to have a cold fuck But think of the money he saved - There once was a. He said with a grin As he wiped off his chin, 'If my ear were a cunt I would fuck it - There was a young man from Belgrave, Who found a dead whore in a cave. '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. I thought it might contain a four letter word or two, but the entire limerick is profane and suggestive in a way that I could not have imagined. There once was a man from Nantucket, Whose cock was so long he could suck it. My students all know the first line of the famous limerick, but it turns out that only one in thirty knows the whole thing. It Was froth of the sea Where hed tried to be free, The spume of the fate hed once struck at. Then there is the dirty version of this limerick, which is honestly too dirty for me to post here. There once was a man from Nantucket Whose life was a sham. Like his Irish descent Of his record he says, Ill just duck it. The many ribald versions of the limerick are the basis for its lasting popularity. The original version of the limerick goes like this: Whose misstatements could fill up a bucket. There Once Was A Man From Nantucket - Ribald Versions. I believe that declaring a word profane only serves to give it power, and though I rarely use profanity in my own life (and almost never in the written form unless it’s coming from the mouth of a character), I yearn for the day when the idea that any word is profane ends.ĭespite this perfect combination of poetry and profanity, I had never taken the time to find the limerick about the woman from Nantucket and read the final four lines.Īfter hearing the limerick referenced yet again on a podcast yesterday, I finally decided to find and read the entire limerick.

I’ve always adored poetry, even in the limerick form, and I’ve also been interested in the ways in which society deems a word to be profane.

Oddly enough, I had never bothered to look for the rest of the limerick, at first because the Internet did not exist so finding it would have been difficult, but after that for reasons I can’t imagine. For twenty years or more, I have listened to people in movies and on television begin reciting the limerick “There Once Was a Man from Nantucket” and then stop after the first line and laugh, acknowledging that the next lines contained profanity of some kind.

There once was a man from nantucket