The exhibition of another kind of incompetence to do the thing “we do,” highly provoking to the hilarious mood, is a breach of good manners; for here there comes in something of the sense of social superiority, and something of the joyous momentary relief from the burden of rules of etiquette. Just as “Society” gets nearest to a genuine laugh when confronted with the vulgarities of Midas as he pushes into her inner circle, so the savage keenly enjoys his opportunity of detecting gaucherie and want of savoir faire on the side of his white visitors. Indeed, he seems ready, when he is sure of not offending, to treat these breaches of etiquette with good-natured merriment. A traveller tells us that on visiting the house of an Indian chief in Canada he sat down on what he took to be a bundle of buffalo robes. The composure of mind proper to a guest of royalty must have been slightly disturbed at the discovery that the robes began to move and undulate beneath him, till to his utter confusion {242} he felt himself projected into the middle of the tent among the embers. The chief, his three wives and the other native people in the tent “shrieked with laughter” at the catastrophe. The full measure of the good humour that lay behind this laughter revealed itself to the white visitor when he saw emerging from the heap of robes the fourth and youngest wife of the chief, who, to her credit be it said, joined in the hilarity.[194]
Something of the reflective element seems to peep out in one variety of this laughter at the odd ways of the white man. A missionary, one of the discerning ones as it would seem, found the Sea Dyaks disposed to treat the idea of our religious services as a joke. They were curious to learn what was required of the religious worshipper, and particularly wanted to know whether he was forbidden to laugh; and they explained their inquisitiveness by confessing that, like Mr. Barrie’s “Humorist,” they were far from sure of being able to restrain themselves.[195] Solemn ceremony with its severe demands will be apt, when its meaning is hidden, to provoke in savages and in children alike a keen desire for the relief of a laugh.
A palpable ingredient of mind appears in the laughter of savages at the white man’s ideas about the beginnings and the endings of things. The inquirer into their beliefs may present himself to them as a quite unreasonable sceptic, grubbing at the very roots of things which sensible men accept as self-explanatory. The members of a tribe in Central Australia (Arunta tribe) were immensely tickled by the question how their remote ancestors came by the sacred stones or sticks which they had handed down to them. The idea, that anything could have existed before these {243} original ancestors, struck them as ridiculous. The ultimate explanation of any custom of the tribe was, “Our fathers did it, and therefore we do it”. To try to go behind tradition was to challenge its sufficiency, and so to put forward an absurd paradox.[196] Here we have a mental attitude at once like and unlike that of our children; for the latter are conservative of tradition and disposed to accept authority, but at the same time very energetic in pushing back inquiry into “what came before”.
Intelligence would seem not merely to be stirring, but to be capable of adroit play when the savage detects the ridiculous in the white man’s ideas of the future of his race. How many of the simple savages who are instructed in the dogmas of the Christian religion accept them unquestioningly it would be hard to say. Many, perhaps, fail to put any definite meaning into what they hear. Now and again, however, we meet with an instance of a daring laugh at what strikes the hearer as utterly absurd. A teacher of the native Australians had once tried to explain to an intelligent black the doctrine of the immateriality and immortality of the soul. He afterwards learned that his pupil had gone away from the lesson to have a hearty fit of laughter at the absurdity of the idea “of a man’s living and going about without arms, legs, or mouth to eat”.[197] The crass materialism of this tyro’s effort to assimilate spiritual ideas was much the same as we observe in our children.
In this laughter at our ways and our ideas we superior people are inclined to see merely the ignorance and narrowness of mind of the laughers. Yet it is possible that the savage may, once and again, in making merry at our {244} expense show himself really our superior. His good sense may be equal to the detection of some of the huge follies in the matter of dress and other customs to which the enlightened European so comically clings. And he has been known to strike the satirical note and to look down upon and laugh “at the stupid self-satisfied Europeans who preached so finely but practised so little what they preached”.[198]
We may now glance at the intra-tribal activity of the mirthful impulse. That this fills some place in the life of savage communities has been illustrated in our account of their teasings. We must not expect to find here a large field for the play of what we call the comic spirit. As we shall see presently, this spirit only begins to fly bravely when the movement of civilisation introduces more diversity of class, and, further, a greater liberty of utterance—for women as well as for men.
A pretty clear illustration of laughter directed to fellow-tribesmen is supplied by the merriment that is said to accompany athletic and other competitions in which skill is tested. Among the natives of Victoria, we are informed, a favourite amusement of the young men is the throwing of the spear and other similar exercises. The trials of skill are accompanied by a good deal of laughter, notwithstanding that the older men are present to instruct the boys and that some effort is made to preserve discipline.[199] This merriment is no doubt largely the counterpart of our schoolboys’ laughter in the playground. It is the expression of a keen enjoyment of the triumphs of the game. At the same time {245} if, as one may assume, it is directed against blunders it has a sociological significance. It becomes a “social sanction,” which urges a youth to do his best in the field. Another example illustrates the impulse to laugh at a comrade’s failure to accomplish a feat for which he is totally unprepared. A member of a European party which was visiting the Weddas could move his ears. A native was asked to do the same; and the others, knowing what was to be done, watched him attentively. The man singled out for the feat looked blankly towards the sky, his ears remaining “as if nailed to his head”; at this moving spectacle one of the onlookers suddenly broke out into laughter, the others at once joining in.[200] Here we have laughter at a fellow-tribesman, in face of Europeans too, exactly similar to that which is directed against the European himself. Doubtless, there is much of this kind of laughter at those who make an exhibition of their limitations, especially when the attempt is preceded by a display of vanity and boastfulness. In this respect, too, savage laughter has the ring of the merriment of the playground and of the circus.
One of the first forms of a reciprocal mirthful attack or bantering between classes is that between the Sexes. Savage life supplies us with clear cases of inter-sexual jocosity besides that of the teasing which, as we have seen, is a two-sided game. In a collection of sayings and stories of West Africa we find the following: A woman left her husband to look after a “pot-au-feu”. On returning she found that he had skimmed off the bubbling foam and hidden it in a calabash, naïvely supposing that this was the cream of the dish. She twits him with it and discovers to his slow wits that the savory scum has melted into nothing.[201] This {246} reminds one of many a story of the Middle Ages, and shows how wide-spread is the exposure of the male incompetence to the lash of woman’s merry wit.
These jocose thrusts at the opposite sex are interesting as illustrating the differentiation of class-standards. If the male is laughed at for his bungling at the mysteries of cooking, how much more when he actually fails to keep up with the women folk in his own domain! Mr. Ling Roth, whose eye seems to have been specially focussed for records of the mirthful utterances of savages, tells us that a boat-load of women who had been gathering oysters rowed a race with a visitors’ crew and managed to beat them; whereupon there was a fine outburst of feminine hilarity and much quizzing of the men who had allowed themselves to be beaten by women.[202] Here, surely, was a touch of a higher feeling, a dim perception at least of the permanent and universal forms of the fitness of things.
The clearest example, I have met with, of what we should call a dry humour is to be found in the work just quoted. It seems that a stupid old soothsayer once called together a large concourse of chiefs to deal with the problem of naming his children. These, he contended, were not properly his, but had been begotten by certain spirits (the Antus or Hantus). One of the chiefs did not enjoy having to come many miles to listen to this sort of stuff, so “he pretended in the midst of the soothsayer’s discourse to faint away, and fell back gasping for breath, kicking his legs spasmodically in the air at the same time”. This interruption brought the tedious proceedings to an end, and so saved the chief from further boredom. But this was not all: the disappointed humbug had to pay the chief {247} who had spoilt his performance some fowls as a punishment for allowing the spirits to attack him.[203] The story is instructive as illustrating the tendency, as soon as classes begin to be marked off, to score off a man of another class. Perhaps, indeed, we have in this jocose imposition on the imposer a suggestion of the merry-making of kings and peoples at the expense of the clergy which was so marked a feature in mediæval hilarity.