There Was an Old Man with a Beard Lyrics
An old man's beard has become a bird colony: two owls, a hen, four larks and a wren have all built their nests in it. That makes eight birds. It is a limerick by Edward Lear, the best known of the nonsense verses in his Book of Nonsense, which first came out in 1846.
There Was an Old Man with a Beard
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!"
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/there-was-an-old-man-with-a-beard/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Edward Lear
- Tune
- Said with a straight face and a growing look of alarm, ending on the beard
- Best for ages
- 4 to 12 years
What Does There Was an Old Man with a Beard Mean?
A limerick is a short, funny verse of five lines. The first, second and fifth lines rhyme with each other (here beard, feared, beard), and the shorter third and fourth lines rhyme with each other (Hen and Wren). Lear's limericks tell about one odd person, and the joke comes in the last line. Lear usually ends the last line with the same word as the first, as this one does with beard.
This is the story. The old man says "It is just as I feared!", as if he had been expecting trouble for some time. Then comes the list of what has happened: two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren have nested in his beard. Add them up: 2 + 1 + 4 + 1 = 8 birds. The joke is that the man is more worried than surprised, and his beard has become a tree.
The picture does the rest. In the book each limerick comes with a little drawing by Lear, and a beard that holds a whole flock is a gift for a cartoonist. Children can also work out that owls, larks and wrens do not really nest in beards, which is exactly why it is funny.
History and Origin
Edward Lear, who lived from 1812 to 1888, drew and wrote in England. His Book of Nonsense was first published in 1846, and its limericks made the five-line form famous. Lear himself never called them limericks, and the name came later. In the book's own dedication, the verses are for the great-grandchildren and grand-nephews and nieces of the 13th Earl of Derby, and the greater part of them were first made for the children's parents.
It is the first limerick in the book. Another limerick in the same book, number 85, opens with the very same line and tells a different story, about a horse.
Learning Activities
- Count the birds: draw the beard and add the owls, hen, larks and wren one at a time, then add up how many there are.
- Spot the rhymes: clap on each rhyming word, and notice that the two short lines have their own pair.
- Write your own: start with 'There was an Old Man with a ___' and let each child suggest what happened.
- Beard faces: glue cotton wool on a paper face and tuck in paper birds from the poem.