You kill a joke by explaining it, except that the humourlessness of the explanation, or the explainer, is often very funny. Then there are the people who know what’s funny, and have the knock-knock jokes or dirty limericks to prove it. Dictionaries and literal translations – both funny, both context-free; real poets and status-conscious journals of record. Hilarious. That just about covers the targets in this expansion of the one about a student wanting to bugger a swan, by Gavin Ewart (1916–2005).

And then there’s the moment just after you’ve mocked something or someone, when you realise that they’re only doing their job or being who they are, and you feel a bit ashamed of yourself. That’s there, too: because people don’t change all that much, as the two periods of po-faced elaboration so clearly show. We all like a laugh, we’re all interested in unusual sex (Ewart certainly was), and close observation is equally the keystone of scientific method and comedy. Ewart’s erotic and satirical poetry was often love poetry in disguise, of course.

Two Semantic Limericks

1. According to The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1933)

There existed an adult male person who had lived a relatively short time, belonging or pertaining to St. John’s*, who desired to commit sodomy with the large web-footed swimming-birds of the genus Cygnus or subfamily Cygninae of the family Anatidae, characterized by a long and gracefully curved neck and a majestic motion when swimming.

So he moved into the presence of the person employed to carry burdens, who declared: “Hold or possess as something at your disposal my female child! The large web-footed swimming birds of the genus Cygnus or subfamily Cygninae of the family Anatidae, characterized by a long and gracefully curved neck and a majestic motion when swimming, are set apart, specially retained for the Head, Fellows and Tutors of the College.”

2. According to Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (Edition of 1765)

There exifted a person, not a woman or a boy, being in the firft part of life, not old, of St John’s* who wifhed to – the large water-fowl, that have along and very straight neck, and are very white, excepting when they are young (their legs and feet being black, as are their bills, which are like that of a goofe, but fomething rounder, and a little hooked at the lower ends, the two fides below their eyes being black and fhining like ebony).

In consequence of this he moved step by step to the one that had charge of the gate, who pronounced: “Poffefs and enjoy my female offspring! The large water-fowl, that have a long and very straight neck, and are very white, excepting when they are young (their legs and feet being black, as are their bills, which are like that of a goofe, but fometimes rounder, and a little hooked at the lower ends, the two fides below their eyes being black and fhining like ebony) are kept in ftore, laid up for a future time, for the fake of the gentlemen with Spanish titles.”

*A college of Cambridge University

GAVIN EWART (1977)

To read last week's Poem of the Week, "A Righteous Man" by Edwin Muir, click here.

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