Who invented limericks?

The limerick's origin is unclear. The form began to appear in newspapers in the United States in the late 1800s, and became an extremely popular form of light verse in the early 1900s due in large part to the British writer Edward Lear. Lear produced his own volume of limericks in 1846, and his "Book of Nonsense" (1846), which included limericks, was followed by three more "Nonsense Books" in subsequent years. However, these sources claim he may not have been the inventor of the form. An early example appears in a collection of Irish ballads published in 1773.