"There once was a man from Nantucket" + Limerick Literary Link - wikipedia.org + stanford.edu
Excerpt: "There once was a man from Nantucket" is the opening line for many limericks. Its popularity can be attributed to the limerick genre and the way the name of the island of Nantucket lends itself easily to humorous rhymes and puns, particularly obscene ones.
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There once was a man from Nantucket, or one relation between rhyming, joking, and narrating
William Flesch