SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE LOST LIMERICK

 "The Lost Limerick" by Guy Gilpatric (first published in Britannia and Eve, January 1930; then published in America in The Saturday Evening Post, January 4, 1930; reprinted in Argosy  [UK], September 1940; reprinted in Glencannon:  Great Stories from The Saturday Evening Post, 1953)

This was the fourth recorded adventure of Mr. Colin Glencannon, ship's engineer of the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle, and the first to appear in The Saturday Evening Post.  A further sixty-six stories and one novel (in collaboration with Norman Reilly Raine, in which Glencannon met Raine's character Tugboat Annie) followed through 1950-- all but three appearing in SEP.  Glencannon, along with Tugboat Annie and William Hazlett Upton's Alexander Botts, was one of the most popular characters to appear in SEP.

So, who is Glencannon?

"Mr. Colin Glencannon, shjp's engineer of the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle, is blessedly, completely, blissfully, belligerently without redeeming social value.  If, by some horrible mishap, Guy Gilpatric had been a writer of pornography instead of humor, no judge in any court in any hall of justice anywhere between Alcatraz and Zanzibar would have permitted Glencannon to wind up in print.  For he appeals to that strange section of our phrenological chart, the prurient.  We lust after the pure, bellyaching, guffawing laughs Glencannon provides us.  He is a lewd, low, lascivious fellow who cares no more for his reader than he cares for a dry whistle.  Liquor is the guiding principle of his life."

As the Inchcliffe Castle makes her way from Melilla in Spanish Morocco to Algiers, Mr. Glencannon appears bereft, if not desperate.  He had foolishly sent his money back home while in Melilla and is facing three days in Algiers without funds.  Worse, he had even more foolishly not stocked enough liquor to keep him occupied over theose three days.

What to do?  What to do?

A breakfast (his time-honored repast of a heaping quart of porridge, lubricated with a lump of oleomargarine the size of a cricket ball), Glencannon was visibly troubled.  When Captain Ball asked what the problem was, Glencannon offered this story:

"My nairves.  They've been all a-joomp and a-jangle since we cleared Melilla for Algiers.  Yes, captain, since we cleared Melilla.  I just fear that Malilla will envetually be the death o' me.

"Weel, [he continued] it's a seetuation so strange as to be no less than eunuch.  As some of you know, Captain Ball and gentlemen, I've always been a great one for lummericks -- silly vurse of poesy, like, foe instance, the one about a suirtain young man from Bombay who went out a-riding one day, and the coolie who lived in Hong Kong whose job was to hammer a dong.  You know that sort o' thing?...O' course:  Weel, there are liteerally hundreds o' them, a' more or less immoral, but a' o' them verra comiuc -- yes, verra, verra comic indeed!  It's  been a hobby o' mine to collect and meemorize a lummerick for every port in the world; in fact, it's been a matter o' pride that no liviong man, aship or ashore, could stumnop me when it comes to lummericks.  Weel, when I heard about our next port o' call being Melilla, I o' course thought o' the famous lummerick which goes -- weel, the first line goes something about Melilla.  Ye know it?"

And here, Glencannon said that he could not remember the limerick.  Try as hard as he could the rhyme avoided him, although it always seemed on the tip of his tongue.  the captain and others at the table all agreed they were familiar with the famous limerick, but not one of them could recall exactly how it went -- not the officers, not the mess boy, nor the cook.  This bothered the captain, because, as captain, he had the best brain on the ship.  The other officers were also proud of their brains, and were equally frustrated.  Each swore that, with a little bit of thought they would remember the verse.  The captain was willing to bet that he  would remember it soon.  Others were willing take the bet, and soon it escalted to a shipwide poo, with everyone putting in ten percent of their wages, and the one who first remembered the rhyme before they reach Algiers would take the whole pot, which had swollen to sixty-four pounds, nineteen shillings, sixpence.

While everyone was racking their brains to remember a limerick that had never existed, Glencannon went to his room and scoured over his book of collected limericks, eventually finding one that could be adapted to fit Melilla.  Then he took his bagpipes and what little was left of his bottle of Duggen's Dew of Kirkintilloch and went on deck to play four hours of "Cock o' the North" -- which "as all good Caledonians know, is the greatest and grandest music ever composed by mortal man, but, unfortunately, none but the Caledonians are capable of appreciating it"  The  blaring music served to distract all the crew members who were trying to come up with the limerick.

Alas, for Glencannon., he did not count on the ship's radio operator, a young man as larcenous as himself.  The operator had been radioing all ships in the area for the words to a limerick about Melilla and had learned form dozens of sources that of such limerick existed.  He threatened to expose Glencannon's scam to the captain unless he receive a fifty percent share, and Glencannon had  no choice but the accede.

And so Glencannon and the radio operator won the  money.  While ashore in Algiers, the captain happened to meet the world's greatest expert on limericks and learned that he had been gulled:  the winning limerick was actually one about Manilla and had been written by the limerick expert himself many years before.  But it was too late, the money had been spent on liquor and, through a  window, the captain could hear a snake charmer's pipes change its tune to "Cock o' the North."  Looking out, he could see Glencannon, drunk as a lord, with a pile of wounded Arabs heaped all around him, while the wireless operator was selling a tom-tom to American tourists.

John Guy Gilpatric (1896-1950) was an American pilot, flight instructor, journalist, and writer.  He received his pilot's license when he was sixteen; that same year he set the United Stats altitude record.  As a teenager, he became a stunt pilot and a flight instructor.  He was stationed overseas as an engineering officer during World War I.  following the was he worked as a journalist in Paris, returning to America in 1940.  He is credited with popularizing spear-fishing in the 1930s and influenced diving pioneer Jean-Jacques Costeau.  An editor at The Saturday Evening Post, in response to a question, stated that the reason the magazine did not print more stories by Gilpatric was because he just didn't writing them fast enough.  In addition to his Glencannon stories, Gilpatric wrote a  number of aviation stories and tales about Francis X. Olvaney, a crooked Tammany Hall politician.  One of his novels, Action in the North Atlantic, was made into a film starring Humphrey Bogart and was nominated for an academy award.  A television series about Glencannon was produced in 1959, starring Thomas Mitchell.

Gilpatric's life ended in a tragic turn.  His wife Maude was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1950 and the couple made a suicide pact.  Gilpatric shot Maude in the back of the head, then turned the gun on himself.  Although it was never proven, it is now believed that Maude had never had breast cancet, and that the doctor had read the wrong medical chart.