Political caricatures were known to the early Egyptians;[465] and in Venezuela, besides pre-Columbian figures, a statuette with a gigantic nose has been found which is supposed to represent the Spanish invader.[466] Indirect satire forms a poetic analogue to these creations of the pictorial art, as it is an ironical form of teasing which imitates in an exaggerated manner, and makes the most of awkwardness and weakness, to raise a laugh against their possessor. Here play and earnest are frequently mingled, the poet usually setting out with the serious intention of annoying his victim, and yet taking such pleasure in the effort that the attack becomes genuine play. Indeed, we may say that the happiest and most effective satires are usually those which reveal such playfulness. The epistolæ obscurorum virorum afford brilliant examples as well as many passages in Rabelais’s immortal work.
Finally, we must note the kind of teasing which is implied in provocative words and actions. Children often have the desire to use insulting and abusive language to their elders, but, not quite daring to utter it, they assume an impertinent air which sometimes seems partly playful. Thus Compayré tells of a child who said to his mother, “Vilaine!” but added immediately, “poupée vilaine”; and Marie G—— in her third year said to her father, “Papa, you are a—stove, you are a—tray,” while the expression of her face plainly showed that she had a more offensive epithet in mind.
There can be no doubt that the fighting instinct often finds expression in the direct effort to excite others to anger by provoking words. Such taunts are frequently thrown into rhythmical form, and so constitute a primitive lyric in which the musical element is not wanting. This is especially the case when there are several participants, who chant them in a sort of recitative, and usually adopt, as far as my observation goes, that fundamental stereotyped measure which forms the basis of all[467] primitive German child-song, and which in its simplest form is this:
In this measure the street urchins call mockingly after a teamster:
“’S hängt eener hinde dran,
’S hängt eener hinde dran,”
or when they wittily compare a tipsy man with an over-loaded and toppling wagon:
“Er hot, er hot,