A word may well be expended on the subject of the organisation of the laughing propensity into regular amusements among savage tribes. One of the things which a white man can learn from these much-misunderstood peoples is the art of social entertainment. Without luxurious salons, without plate and rare wines, without the theatre and the concert hall, they manage to obtain a good deal of genuine, unpretentious conviviality. When, writes one traveller, they are relieved of the presence of strangers they have much easy social conversation. Round their own fires they sing and chat, and older men lie and brag about feats in war and chase. “Jokes pass freely and the laugh is long if not loud.”[204]
A standard dish in these social entertainments is taking off the peculiarities of other tribes and of Europeans. Mimicry, the basis of the actor’s art, is often carried to a high degree of perfection among these uncouth savages; and it is highly prized. When, writes a missionary of the tribes of the remote part of Victoria, a native is able to imitate the peculiarities of some absent member of the tribe, it is very common to hear all in the camp convulsed with laughter.[205] The Indians of Brazil hold the peculiarities, e.g., the beard, of other tribes up to laughter by means {248} of a lively pantomime.[206] This mimicry, as might be expected, embraces the odd ways of the white man. The natives of New South Wales used to be so skilful in this art that one wrote of them: “Their mimicking of the oddities, dress, walk, gait and looks of all the Europeans whom they have seen from the time of Governor Phillips downwards, is so exact as to be a kind of historic register of their several actions and characters”.[207] The same authority tells us that the Tahitians are acute observers of the manners, actions, and even looks of strangers; and if they have any singular imperfections or oddities, they will not fail to make themselves merry at their expense.[208] Another traveller certifies to the fact that the aborigines of Victoria were splendid mimics, and would, after attending the white man’s church, “take a book and with much success imitate the clergyman in his manner, laughing and enjoying the applause which they received”.[209] A turn for mimicry is found also among the North American Indians. The Californian Indians gave to the American whites the name “Wo’hah,” formed from “whoa-haw,” the sound they heard the early emigrants produce when they drove their oxen. “Let an Indian see an American coming up the road, and cry out to his fellows: ‘There comes a wo’hah,’ at the same time swinging his arm as if driving oxen, and it will produce convulsive laughter.”[210]
Along with this skill in mimicry, savages show considerable readiness in the verbal arts of descriptive caricature, witty sayings and repartee. In practising these, we are told, they make ample use of the instrument of irony.
The possession of these rudiments of talent naturally leads {249} to a certain amount of specialisation. It is attested again and again that our uncultured savage communities possess their professional pantomists, jesters and wits. Indeed, we read of crude forms of a comic art among savages so low in the scale as the Australians and the Tasmanians. Thus, Lumholtz writes of the pantomimic dances of the Australian blacks,[211] and Ling Roth assures us that the Tasmanians have their drolls and mountebanks, who exhibit the peculiarities of individuals with considerable force.[212] Among the Sumatrans, again, are to be found “characters of humour,” who by buffoonery, mimicry, punning, repartee and satire are able to keep the company in laughter at intervals during a night’s entertainment.[213] In some cases jesters are appointed by a chief, just as a fool used to be selected by one of our kings. In Samoa every chief has his regular clown, a privileged person who, among other liberties, is allowed that of taking the food out of the chiefs mouth.[214] A privileged buffoon in Kanowit, who had been given an old gun, told the Resident that he had killed fourteen deer with one bullet. The Resident being puzzled, he explained that he had cut the bullet out each time.[215] Here we have the exact counterpart to the trick of the European clown of the circus.
Among the Eskimo of Greenland, it seems, there is a regular performance in which the aspiring “funny men” compete for popular favour. After a repast they get up, one after the other, each exhibiting his musical resources by beating a drum and singing, and adding a touch of the actor’s art by making comical gestures, and playing ridiculous tricks with the face, head and limbs.[216] Much the same kind of contest takes place {250} in connection with their peculiar ordeals, already referred to. Each of the two litigants tries to make the other ridiculous, by singing satirical songs and relating misdeeds; and the one who succeeds in getting the audience to laugh most at his jibes or invectives is pronounced the conqueror. Even such serious crimes as murder are often expiated in this merry fashion.[217]
In one or two cases we read of more elaborate entertainments. Thus, some of the natives of the Western Pacific have a regular masquerade performed before the King, into which may enter a histrionic representation of a British sailor with his cutlass, acted by a leading buffoon, who combines with the rôle of a “premier” the “fool’s” privilege of breaking through the strict laws of decorum by pointing to the King and asking ironically if that was the King—amid shouts of laughter.[218]
Other traces of a rudimentary art of the comic are to be found in the amusing songs and stories which can be traced to savage invention. The Australians had songs in which the peculiarities of Europeans were caricatured, the chorus being sung amid shouts of laughter.[219] Another comic song, heard among some of the aborigines of Australia, took off the bodily peculiarities of some men—presumably of another tribe—in the graceful lines:—
Oh, what legs, oh, what legs !
The Kangaroo-rumped fellows.
Oh, what legs, oh, what legs ! [*]