[218] Quoted from Jackson’s Narrative (1840) by Erskine, Western Pacific, p. 468.
[219] Bonwick, op. cit., p. 29.
[220] Grey, Two Expeditions in Australia (1841), ii., pp. 307–8.
[221] J. Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus and his Friends.
[222] R. E. Dennett, Folklore of the Fjort, pp. 92–3.
[223] Mr. Ling Roth has pointed out to me that the laughter of the Australian at the absurdity of the idea of a dead man going about without legs, etc., occurs in a race usually placed among the lowest in the scale. Yet this apparent exception does not, I think, affect the validity of the generalisation in the text. The intellect displayed in this ridicule is not of a high order; and, further, we are distinctly told that the scoffer in the case was an “intelligent” native, that is to say, one of more than the average intelligence of his tribe.
[224] Mr. Ling Roth writes me that he agrees with Miss Kingsley as to the difference between the laughter of savages and of children. I should be quite ready to accept this view so far as it concerns the special forms and directions of the mirth. The differences of capacity, experience and habit involved in the difference between the child and adult will, of course, introduce many dissimilarities into their manifestations of the mirthful temper. I hold, however, that as regards the fundamental psychical processes involved, the similarity is real and great.
[225] Macdonald, op. cit., i., p. 266.
[226] Burton, op. cit., ii., pp. 338–9.
[227] See p. 42.