# There once was a man from Nantucket
"There once was a man from Nantucket" is the opening line of a family of English-language limericks, most of which are bawdy, and it has become a stock phrase in its own right, used to signal that a dirty limerick is about to follow.[1](https://digitalcultures.net/slang/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) The line works as a joke setup even when no verse follows, because many readers know, or think they know, what comes next.[2](https://fathomaway.com/whats-word-limerick/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| What it is | The opening line of one of the most famous limericks in English, associated above all with indecent verse[1](https://digitalcultures.net/slang/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) • [2](https://fathomaway.com/whats-word-limerick/) |
| Why Nantucket | The place name rhymes with a vulgar word, which made it a natural hook for bawdy verse[3](https://www.explainsmbc.com/comic/nantucket) |
| Early print dates | Sources give 1879 (The Pearl), 1902, and a 1924 newspaper exchange for early published versions[4](https://www.wordlelimericks.com/why-limericks-start-there-once-was/) • [5](https://www.shamrockgift.com/blog/limerick-poems-origin/) • [6](https://blog.nantucket.net/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) |
| Clean version | "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"[7](https://www.pureairsystems.com/2011/01/16/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) |
| 1924 contest | A four-verse series ran in a June 14, 1924 Nantucket newspaper, passed between the Princeton Tiger, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Exchange, and the Pawtucket Times[6](https://blog.nantucket.net/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) |
| Host form | The limerick: five anapestic lines rhyming AABBA, lines 1, 2, and 5 trimeter and lines 3 and 4 dimeter[8](https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/limerick.html) |
## The line and its host form
The limerick is a five-line comic verse with an AABBA rhyme scheme and a bouncy anapestic rhythm, a meter built from two weakly stressed syllables followed by a strongly stressed one. The first, second, and fifth lines carry three stresses, the third and fourth two, and the form usually ends on a punchline or absurd turn.[8](https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/limerick.html) • [9](https://poets.org/glossary/limerick) [Edward Lear](https://www.edgepedia.org/edward-lear)'s self-illustrated *A Book of Nonsense* (1846) popularized the form and remains a benchmark for it.[9](https://poets.org/glossary/limerick)
"Nantucket" fits this machine unusually well. The name supplies an easy rhyme, and the rhyme set includes words that give the verse its notorious reputation.[4](https://www.wordlelimericks.com/why-limericks-start-there-once-was/) An Irish Times columnist added a second reason: as a former whaling center, [Nantucket](https://www.edgepedia.org/nantucket) had a high concentration of drinkers with a ribald sense of humor, and the island's name has launched more limericks over the years than most place names can claim.[10](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-1.1212444) The same columnist observed that it would have been more logical to call the form the "Nantucket" rather than the "limerick," since Limerick itself defies easy rhyming.[10](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-1.1212444)
## Printed origins
The dating of the earliest version is unsettled. One account states that the line was first published in 1902 and became a famous starter for American limerick poems.[5](https://www.shamrockgift.com/blog/limerick-poems-origin/) Another places the earliest published version in 1879, in *The Pearl*, a magazine known for its risqué content.[4](https://www.wordlelimericks.com/why-limericks-start-there-once-was/) A third source dates the original version it quotes to 1902, with a more ribald version following in 1927 that became more famous and memorable than the original.[7](https://www.pureairsystems.com/2011/01/16/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) These accounts cannot all be right about a single first publication, and the scholarly study of limerick history is itself described as a "muddle," with a remarkable scarcity of documentary evidence about the form's origins.[11](https://daily.jstor.org/there-once-was-a-poem-called-a-limerick/)
What is well documented is the 1924 newspaper exchange. A series of four limericks first appeared in a June 14, 1924 edition of a Nantucket newspaper, beginning when the Princeton Tiger revived a then well-known Nantucket limerick and the [Chicago Tribune](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-tribune) answered with a second; the New York Exchange added a third rhyme and the Pawtucket Times took over from there.[6](https://blog.nantucket.net/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) The island guide *Yesterday's Island/Today's Nantucket* later encouraged readers to continue the saga with their own chapters, a challenge the Nantucket.net blog renewed in 2017 and again with pandemic-themed verses in 2020.[6](https://blog.nantucket.net/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/) • [12](https://blog.nantucket.net/pandemic-nantucket-limericks-2020/)
## The clean and the bawdy
The best-known clean version runs:
> 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.
The final line rhymes "Nantucket" with itself, a move the verse gets away with through the pun on the town name.[7](https://www.pureairsystems.com/2011/01/16/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/)
The bawdy versions are the ones that made the line famous. By 1900, limerick writing had split into two branches, the decent and the "smutty," according to a historical review in the *Journal of the History of Dentistry*.[13](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15666504/) Some scholars of the form argue that the bawdy limericks are the true limericks and the clean ones the lesser ones, and the scholar Gershon Legman described the limerick as a vehicle of cultivated, if unrepressed, sexual humor in the English language.[11](https://daily.jstor.org/there-once-was-a-poem-called-a-limerick/) • [8](https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/limerick.html) The most widely quoted obscene version is usually left unfinished in print; a Stanford Humanities Center essay noted that of its students, only one in thirty knew the whole famous limerick rather than just the first line.[14](https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/interventions/there-once-was-man-nantucket-or-one-relation-between-rhyming-joking-and)
## Cultural afterlife
The opening line now functions as a reference independent of any single poem. It appears as a prompt in limerick-writing contests, including a formal methods conference competition that gave a special prize to a limerick on the topic of formal methods beginning with the line.[15](https://www.fmeurope.org/conferences/fm2011/limerickscompetition.html) Politicians and comedians use it as shorthand: Senator [Ted Cruz](https://www.edgepedia.org/ted-cruz) drew a flood of mocking replies when he tweeted an article about President Joe Biden along with the line in 2021.[16](https://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-cruz-unleashes-torrent-of-poetic-mockery-with-biden-man-from-nantucket-tweet/) The line also serves as a standard test case in computational poetry: the LimGen system, introduced in a 2021 paper on automated limerick generation, treats the form's five-line story with rhyme, stress, and meter constraints as one of the hardest problems in poetry generation.[17](https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03775)
The line's endurance rests on the same properties that built the limerick itself: a strict, easily memorized shape and a place name that promises a rhyme most readers can guess.[8](https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/limerick.html) • [3](https://www.explainsmbc.com/comic/nantucket)
## References
1. [There Once Was a Man from Nantucket – Meaning, Origin, Usage, Digital Cultures](https://digitalcultures.net/slang/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/)
2. [What's in a Word? Limerick, Fathom](https://fathomaway.com/whats-word-limerick/)
3. [nantucket – Explain SMBC](https://www.explainsmbc.com/comic/nantucket)
4. [There Once Was a Question: Why Limericks Start the Same Way, Marshall Flam](https://www.wordlelimericks.com/why-limericks-start-there-once-was/)
5. [Where Do Limerick Poems Come From?, Shamrock Gift](https://www.shamrockgift.com/blog/limerick-poems-origin/)
6. [Limerick Challenge: "There Once Was a Man from Nantucket", Nantucket.net](https://blog.nantucket.net/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/)
7. [There Once Was A Man From Nantucket!, Pure Air Systems](https://www.pureairsystems.com/2011/01/16/there-once-was-a-man-from-nantucket/)
8. ["There Once Was a Man From Nantucket": The Limerick, University of Pennsylvania](https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/limerick.html)
9. [Limerick, Academy of American Poets](https://poets.org/glossary/limerick)
10. [An Irishman's Diary, The Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-1.1212444)
11. [There Once Was a Poem Called a Limerick, JSTOR Daily](https://daily.jstor.org/there-once-was-a-poem-called-a-limerick/)
12. [Look Back & Laugh… Pandemic Version of Nantucket Limericks, Nantucket.net](https://blog.nantucket.net/pandemic-nantucket-limericks-2020/)
13. [Dental, oral and facial limericks of yesterday and today, Journal of the History of Dentistry (2004)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15666504/)
14. [There once was a man from Nantucket, or one relation between rhyming, joking, and narrating, Stanford Humanities Center](https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/interventions/there-once-was-man-nantucket-or-one-relation-between-rhyming-joking-and)
15. [Limericks Competition, FM2011](https://www.fmeurope.org/conferences/fm2011/limerickscompetition.html)
16. [Ted Cruz Brutally Mocked On Biden 'Man From Nantucket' Tweet, Mediaite](https://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-cruz-unleashes-torrent-of-poetic-mockery-with-biden-man-from-nantucket-tweet/)
17. [There Once Was a Really Bad Poet, It Was Automated but You Didn't Know It, arXiv (2021)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03775)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Poetry works › Individual poems › Anonymous and traditional poems*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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