I’m currently in the midst of Ohsoji (Japanese for “Great Cleaning”) an annual ritual of cleaning everything in sight so as to start the New Year fresh. In the process, I’ve again come across my folklore books by Gershon Legman ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershon_Legman), the greatest scholar yet of erotic and taboo folklore. While born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he lived most of his productive life in exile in France. I met him (and was the one to introduce him) at a public lecture that he gave in Berkeley in 1965. The party after his lecture was at my house where he signed my copy of the only one of his books that I owned at the time.

Legman argued convincingly, in my estimation, that a major factor behind the great amount of violence in American life is our repression of sexual expression. In addition to his very scholarly research into the erotic, Legman is also known as the inventor of the vibrating dildo.

Of greatest interest to Archive members would probably be chapter 13, “Castration” in his No Laughing Matter: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, volume 2, pages 420 to 671. (The book totals 1,803 pages!)

There are also several limericks touching on themes of castration in his book The Limerick: 1700 Examples, with Notes, Variants, and Index. (This one is “only” 517 pages long.) There is a very long, scholarly introduction to the volume. Each limerick has noted the date(s) on which it was collected and notes are in a long appendix to the book.

A few examples:

There was a young sailor name Bates

Who did the fandango on skates.

He fell on his cutlass

Which rendered him nutless

And practically useless on dates.

[In the notes Legman includes, “Joke, on a gentleman named Bates introducing his family to Abraham Lincoln : ‘My wife, Mrs. Bates; my daughter, Miss Bates; and my son, Master Bates.’ Lincoln : ‘Why brag about it?’”]

There was a young fellow names Bill

Who took an atomic pill.

His navel corroded,

His asshole exploded,

And they found his nuts in Brazil.

There was a young man of Canute

Who was troubled by warts on his root.

He put acid on these,

And now, when he pees,

He can finger his root like a flute.

Another young man, from Beirut

Played a penis as one might a flute,

Till he met a sad eunuch

Who lifted his tunic

And said, “Sir, my instrument’s mute.”

The wife of a red-headed Celt

Lost the key to her chastity-belt.

She tried picking the lock

With an Ulsterman’s cock,

And the next thing he knew, he was gelt.

Reminds me of those limericks of long ago featured in Playboy magazine by Shel Silversteen.

Here is one my friends used to say in High School:

There once was a man from Madras

Who's balls were made out of brass

When they'd clang together

They'd play "Stormy Weather"

And sparks would soar from his ass.

The outburst of poetry reminds me of a couple from my youth which might have some bearing on this august forum:

There once was a man named Eugene

Who invented a wanking machine

On the forty-fifth stroke

The bloody thing broke

And mashed his balls into cream

or

There was a man from Calcutta

Who fell asleep in the gutter

The tropical sun

Burnt a hole in his bum

And melted his nuts into butter.

And then, of course, there was the one that went:

There once was a man from Australia

Who painted his bum like a dahlia

The colours were bright

And all was right

But the smell was quite a faliah.

also

There was a man from Umtata

Who was a champaion farter

He could fart anything

from God Save The King

To Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata

There once was a man from Kent

Who thought his peter was bent

He put it in a vice

And doubled it twice

And instead of coming he went.

Gerri