MORE WIT AND HUMOR
The real truth about Irish humor as a thing to itself and apart is that
it is based either on ignorance or on a certain slowness of mind. The
Dublin car driver who on being told by a constable that his name was
obliterated from his car replied, “Arrah, me name’s not Oblitherated,
it’s O’Grady,” no doubt achieved what will pass among the average for
humor. All the same, he did not know that he was saying anything good,
and his _mot_, if _mot_ one may call it, was the direct outcome of a
profound ignorance of the English language. The books of Irish humor
abound with instances of this form of humorsomeness: “You are not opaque,
are you?” sarcastically asked one Irishman of another who was standing in
front of him at the theater. “Indeed I’m not,” replied the other, “it’s
O’Brien that I am.” Clearly one might manufacture this kind of humor _ad
infinitum_. The Chinese are said to consider it a great joke if a man
should fall down and break his arm, and I have seen Englishmen laughing
at a man who has been unfortunate enough to have his hat blown off in a
high wind. But the Irish do not laugh at these things. Even the native
bull, of which they are so proud, fails to tickle them. The Irishman
says his bull solemnly and unconsciously, and the Englishman does the
laughing. In essence the Irish bull is really a blunder. Nuttall,
with his usual charming frankness, defines a bull as “a ludicrous
inconsistency, or blunder in speech.” Children and Irishmen are always
making them: “If it please the coort,” quoth an Irish attorney, “if I am
wrong in this, I have another pint which is equally conclusive.” An Irish
reporter, giving an account of a burglary, remarked: “After a fruitless
search, all the money was recovered, except one pair of boots!” A Dublin
clerk on being asked why he was a quarter of an hour late at the office,
made answer: “The tram-car I came by was full, so I had to walk.” “This
is the seventh night you’ve come home in the morning,” observed an Irish
lady to her spouse, “the next time you go out, you’ll stay at home and
open the door for yourself.” The following advertisement is said to have
appeared in a Dublin newspaper: “Whereas John Hall has fraudulently taken
away several articles of wearing apparel, without my knowledge, this is
to inform him that if he does not forthwith return the same his name
shall be made public.” An Irishman who accidentally came across another
Irishman who had failed to meet him after a challenge addressed him in
these words: “Well, sir, I met you this morning and you did not turn up;
however I am determined to meet you to-morrow morning, whether you come
or not.” “Dhrunk!” said a man, speaking of his neighbor, “he was that
dhrunk that he made ten halves of ivry word.” A man who was employed as a
hod-carrier was told that he must always carry up fourteen bricks in his
hod. One morning the supply of bricks ran short, and the man could find
but thirteen to put in his hod. In answer to a loud yell from the street
one of the masons on top of the scaffolding called out: “What do you
want?” “T’row me down wan brick,” bawled Pat, pointing to his hod, “to
make me number good.”
Of course, the great and abiding glory of Ireland in the way of
bull-makers was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Boyle Roche. This worthy
knight once charged a political opponent with being “an enemy to both
kingdoms who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two
sister countries.” He also said that “a man differs from a bird in not
being able to be in two places at once,” and that “the Irish people were
living from hand to mouth, like the birds of the air.” A petition of
the citizens of Belfast in favor of Catholic emancipation he stigmatized
as “an airy fabric based upon a sandy foundation,” and he expressed his
willingness “to give up, not only a part, but, if necessary, even the
whole of our constitution to preserve the remainder.” In one of his most
famous speeches there occurs the appended passage: “Mr. Speaker, if we
once permitted the villainous French Masons to meddle with the buttresses
and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop, nor stay,
sir, until they brought the foundation stones tumbling down about the
ears of the nation. If these Gallican villains should invade us, ’tis on
that table maybe those honorable members might see their own destinies
lying in heaps atop of one another. Here, perhaps, sir, the murderous
crew would break in and cut us to pieces, and throw our bleeding heads
upon that table to stare us in the face.”
“Is your father alive yet?” inquired one O’Brien of one M’Gorry. “No,”
replied M’Gorry solemnly, “not yet!” A beggar called at a house and
said: “For the love of hiven, ma’am, give me a crust of bread, for I’m
so thirsty I don’t know where I’ll sleep to-night.” All of which is very
funny and as who should say, very quaint. But is it humor? It provokes
a smile certainly, yet it points to simplicity, rather than subtilty,
in the Irish character. Indeed, the absolute truth about the bull is
that it is the child of a plentiful lack of wit. A nice derangement of
epitaphs, an opening of one’s mouth and a putting of one’s foot in it,
may provoke mirth in other people, but it does not prove one to be either
witty or merry. It is satisfactory to know that, according to the latest
observations, the fine art of bull-making is going out of fashion among
Irishmen. The Irish were the inventors of the bull, they brought it to
its greatest perfection, they made it redound to their credit as a witty
nation; and one cannot deny their right to cease from its manufacture
if they see fit. In the House of Commons a bull is nowadays seldom
perpetrated, whether consciously or unconsciously, at any rate by the
Irish Party. Irish Members of Parliament have grown too wary to be caught
bulling. They walk delicately in English-cut frock-coats; they rather
pride themselves on their ability to keep down the brogue, and at the
bare mention of the word “bull,” they are prone to shiver.
There is one feature of Irish wit and humor which is worthy of admiration
and imitation. It is a negative feature truly, but an excellent one.
Irishmen do not seem capable of that last infirmary of the doting
mind—the pun. To play effectively upon words is, of course, an art in
itself, and kept within bounds it is an amusing art; but the man who
drops out of art into sheer mechanism, which is what has happened to
the average punster, cannot be considered worthy of the respect of his
fellows. The Irish, as I have said, do not appear to have descended
to these depths. They may be a worn-out, a weary, a dull-witted, an
exhausted, and a brooding and melancholy people, but they are not
punsters. Herein they have a distinct advantage over the English,
among whom the pun appears to obtain wider and wider currency. It is a
lamentable fact that there are judges on the English Bench who never let
slip an opportunity for punning. It makes juries and the gallery guffaw,
and it gets a judge the reputation of being a wit and the possessor of
those minor literary graces which are supposed to be included in the
judicial prerogative. Judges are commonly understood to be irremovable,
but I think that after their third pun retirement should be the only
course for them. The man who makes a pun insults the intellect of his
auditors and commits a gross outrage upon the language. Let all punsters,
whether in high or low places, take heed that they are vulgar and
vicious persons, and neither witty nor wise. A thousand honest bulls are
less to be deprecated than the weeniest pun that was ever let loose.
Before leaving this part of our subject it is perhaps desirable that we
should remember that two of the very wittiest men of our own time have
come to us from Ireland. One of them was the late Mr. Oscar Wilde and the
other is Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Of Oscar Wilde, excepting that in his
prime he was a wit of the first water, I shall say nothing. Mr. George
Bernard Shaw, however, is another story. As a reformer and a serious
writer I make small account of him. On the other hand, as a wit, he is a
portent. He has been an unconscionable time coming into his own, but in
America, at any rate, people are beginning, by childlike, dim degrees,
to perceive that he has brilliance. If he had published the substance of
his printed work in any other form but that of plays, he might have been
a recognized and prosperous humorist long ago. The people who supply
the wit and humor of the day may be set down, without injustice, for a
sorry and indifferent company. Burnand, Payne, Emanuel, Jerome, Lucas,
Sims, Hickory Wood, and Barrie—these are some of the names of them. And
what do they stand for? Parts of _Punch_, _Eliza_, _Three Men in a Boat_,
_The Inside Completuar Britanniaware_ (O blood and knives!), _Mustard and
Cress_, or, The Fat Man’s Sabbath Morning, _The White Cat_, or, Cooper’s
Entire, _Peter Pan_, or, The Old Man’s Crèche. Heaven save us and keep
us from wishing that this squad of awkward witlings had never been born!
Mr. George Bernard Shaw in his sole person, and Irishman though he be, is
worth a wilderness of them. Some day we shall find it out, and in that
good hour Ireland will be able to boast that one of her sons was nearly
as great, nearly as humorous, and nearly as popular as, say, Mr. Mark
Twain.