THE LAUGHTER OF SAVAGES.
In the last chapter we took a glance at the primitive forms of human
laughter as illustrated in children. We may now supplement this by a
brief inquiry into the merriment of the childhood of the race, so far
as this is reflected in the laughter of those savage tribes which have
come under the direct observation of the civilised man.
We shall expect the two domains to disclose similar features,
spontaneity, absence of reflection, whole-hearted simplicity. At the
same time we shall expect the study of the laughter of savages to
bring us more directly in touch with the social conditions which help
to determine the directions of mirth. The study of the savage mind is
the study of a collective mind, that is to say, of a typical form of
ideas, sentiments, and psychical tendencies generally, running through
a community. Its modes of merriment, like its more serious emotional
manifestations, have been observed as common traits of members of a
tribal society.
A word may be said at the outset with respect to the sources of our
information. It is a commonplace that civilised man finds all his
powers taxed when he tries to get into touch with the mind of a
savage. The difficulties of this access will naturally be greater
when the trait to be observed is an emotion which, while it is wont
to display itself with an instinctive directness so long as the {221}
surroundings secure freedom, tends to hide itself as soon as anything
strange appears which induces a feeling of _gêne_. The presence of
strangers, so far removed from the plane of life of savages as the
missionaries or officials of a civilised nation, would, one supposes,
act as such a check to their risible impulses. It is possible,
too, that the stranger who visits a savage tribe may supply, quite
unknowingly perhaps, in his look, dress, and manner of behaviour, a
number of provocatives of laughter which are resisted from a feeling of
what is due to a guest.
That there is some hiding of the merry mood here is not a mere matter
of inference, since travellers distinctly testify to the fact. The
undisciplined savage will now and again show a degree of self-restraint
comparable with that which an educated Frenchman will show when in
a Paris street he is addressed by a hardy British youth in what the
latter cheerfully supposes to be the language of the country. The
following story may serve as an example. A public meeting was being
held in a native village in Africa. An Englishman who was present got
up on a recumbent trunk of a tree, which is used as a seat in native
villages. The log rolled and the Englishman fell heavily. Yet the
whole meeting looked as grave as if the accident had been a part of
the programme. An uninstructed observer might have hastily inferred
that the tribe was wanting in a “sense of humour”. The narrator of
the incident knew better, and gives the incident as a proof of the
great power of self-restraint displayed. The same writer observes that
African savages, while allowing a European traveller to humour them and
treat them as children, will “amuse themselves at his expense after he
is gone, and, indeed, while he is present, if they know that he cannot
understand their speech”.[138] {222}
These considerations will prepare us to understand how some have
regarded savages as dull creatures, who know not how to laugh. That
this view is commonly held by those who have not visited them is
suggested by a passage in one of Peacock’s stories. In _Crotchet
Castle_ Mr. MacQueedy puts forward the thesis that laughter is “an
involuntary action developed in man by the progress of civilisation,”
and adds that “the savage never laughs”.[139]
It is only fair to say that travellers themselves have not been so
foolish as to uphold this view. At the same time, some of them have
drawn hasty conclusions from the fact that they happened never to have
heard members of a particular tribe indulge in laughter. A curious
illustration of this reasoning from inadequate negative evidence is
the dispute that took place, not so long ago, as to whether a people
of Ceylon, known as Weddas (or Veddas), came into the category of
the laughing animal. It was confidently asserted by a certain Mr.
Hartshorne that they never laughed, even when they were experimented
upon, and were confronted with the spectacle of others convulsed.
Another visitor may help us to understand this by his remark that
they vary “between a taciturn and almost morose mood when hungry, and
a laughing reckless mood when not hungry”. Hartshorne must evidently
have observed them in a hungry mood. Could it have been that, unlike
Mary Kingsley, as some of us remember her playfully observing, he had
something about him which kindled appetite?[140] {223}
Other illustrations of a too confident basing of a conclusion on
failure to observe may be found. Thus it is said by one traveller,
Bates, that the Brazilian Indians are of a phlegmatic, apathetic
temperament. A more recent visitor, Von den Steinen, gives us a
different impression, remarking in one instance that “the silent Indian
men and women continually chattered, and Eva’s laughter sounded forth
right merrily” (lustig heraus).[141]
These apparent discrepancies in the notes of different observers point,
I suspect, to something besides such accidents as the particular mood
in which the tribe is found. The ability to provoke laughter is not
possessed by all: witness the failure of many meritorious attempts
by adults to excite children’s merriment. Something of the easy
good-nature which disarms timidity, of fraternal sympathy, and of
the knack of making your audience believe you are like themselves,
seems needed to draw forth all the mirthfulness of these children of
nature.[142] We must always allow for this factor in the personal
equation of the observer of savage ways. It is refreshing to find that
missionaries have so often succeeded in getting at the lighter moods of
the heathen. It speaks well for their genial humanity.
The general impression one derives from these accounts is that
savage tribes are certainly not given over to a sullen despair, but
on the contrary have a large and abundant mirth. Like children, they
appear to express {224} their emotions with great freedom, and their
laughter and other signs of good spirits are of the most energetic
kind. Darwin tells us that his correspondents, missionaries and others,
satisfied him on this point. Loud laughter accompanied by jumping
about and clapping of the hands, and frequently carried to the point
of a flooding of the eyes—these are conspicuous characteristics to be
met with among the Australians and other savage tribes.[143] Other
testimony supports Darwin. Sturt, for example, tells us that the
natives of Central Australia are a merry people, and sit up laughing
and talking all the night long.[144] The more recent observations of
Lumholtz support the view that the natives are “very humorous”.[145]
The Maoris (of New Zealand) are said by one traveller to be “remarkable
for their natural gaiety: they are merry fellows: always laughing
and joking, especially during the adventures of a journey”.[146] Of
the Tasmanians we read: “There is not a little love of fun in the
despised aborigine”.[147] Similarly, the South Sea Islanders are “more
accustomed to jesting, mirth and humour than irritating and reproachful
language”.[148] The natives of Tahiti, again, “jest upon each other
with greater freedom than the Europeans”.[149] So, the Tongans have
“a strong sense of the ludicrous” which they show in “the ordinary
intercourse of life”.[150] Mr. Ling Roth, writing of the natives of
Borneo, speaks of “the chaff and fun so dear to the heart of every
Kanowit”.[151] {225}
In other regions, too, and among other races we light on the same
exuberance of mirth. This is true of the natives of Africa, when they
are unspoiled by Europeans. The Kafirs were said, by one who knew them
earlier, to be generally speaking a good-humoured people with a keen
relish for amusement, and ready to join in a jest.[152] Visitors to the
Gold Coast found that the natives dearly loved a joke, and had a most
lively sense of the ludicrous.[153] Miss Kingsley, as is well known,
found in the West Africans a people still given to mirth and jokes. In
a letter to me she writes: “I think the West African, unadulterated,
the most humorous form of human being there is, and this makes him
exceedingly good company for me”.
Nor is this joyous exuberance confined to the natives of warm climates.
We find examples of it in the chilly North. One who visited the Indians
of the Canadian Red River (the Chippewas) about forty years ago
says, that they are “full of frolic and fond of relating anecdotes;
they laugh immoderately at any trifling joke or absurdity and seem
thoroughly to enjoy existence”.[154]
These recurring statements of travellers about the mirthfulness of
savages are to some extent supported by other evidence. The writer on
the Tasmanians, already quoted, gives us a number of their different
local names for fun. When a people—and especially a savage people—has a
name for a thing, it is a fair inference that it has some considerable
acquaintance with the thing itself.
To say that this or that tribe is given to laughter and joking does
not, of course, imply that the merry temper is {226} the constant or
even the predominant one. We are told, indeed, in certain cases that
the mood is a changeable one, and that these undisciplined men and
women resemble children in their rapid transitions from grave to gay.
Thus one traveller to the Gold Coast remarks that the inhabitants
will change suddenly from reckless gaiety to despondency.[155] On the
other hand, as may be seen from our quotations, the predominance of
the gay temper, as expressed in the habitual smile and readiness to
laugh, seems to be a distinguishing trait of certain savage peoples.
One traveller, writing of the Patagonians, tells us that their faces
were “ordinarily bright and good-natured,” and that two of them in
particular, whom he knew intimately, “always had a smile on their
faces”.[156]
On the other hand, there is reason to think that some tribes stand
out from the general run of good-natured, merry folk by a habitual
preponderance of the grave and austere in their bearing. Rengger, for
example, remarks of the Indians of Paraguay that they are serious
and gloomy (düster), laugh only rarely, and never break into loud
laughter.[157] There are probably serious savage tribes, as there are
serious children in England and other civilised countries. It would be
strange, too, if the treatment of American Indians and other aboriginal
races by their civilised conquerors should not have developed now and
again, even in naturally merry folk, something of a gloomy demeanour,
at least in presence of the white man. Hence, these exceptional cases
do not seem to impair our general conclusion, that laughter has a large
dwelling-place among the uncivilised peoples of the earth. {227}
The descriptions of the movements expressive of mirth, given by these
visitors to savage tribes, are not as a rule full or exact. This might
be taken to mean that the laughter of a savage is much like our own.
Yet this would be a rash inference; for we must remember that it is not
easy for one untrained in the finer kinds of observation to note with
precision movements so complex and so rapidly changeful as those which
express gladness and mirth. The apparatus of the photographic camera
and of the phonograph has not as yet, I believe, been made use of for
the purpose of registering these presumably primitive forms of laughter
ere they vanish from the earth.
Darwin, as we have seen, has satisfied himself as to the flooding
of the eyes. The concomitant movements of hands and feet seem to be
common. A more precise account of these movements is given by Ling
Roth. The Tasmanians, he tells us, accompanied their loud bursts of
laughter with movements of the hands to the head and quick tapping
movements of the feet.[158] The loud, deep-chested character of
the men’s laughter is sometimes specially noted. A recent visitor
to Central Africa regrets that, under European influence, the
deep-chested, hearty laughter of men is being replaced by what is known
as the “mission giggle” in the younger folk.[159]
I have come across, too, one attempt to describe with some exactness
the expression of a happy mood when it flows on more quietly. The good
spirits of the Andamanese, it appears, show themselves in a sparkling
of the eyes, and a wrinkling of the surrounding skin, also in a drawing
back of the corners of the mouth which remains partially open.[160] It
may be concluded that the facial movements and {228} other changes
correspond broadly with what we have seen to be the characteristic
expression in the case of the children of civilised races; though
differences of racial physique undoubtedly introduce a slight amount of
dissimilarity into the expressive movements of laughter.[161]
Much of this savage laughter is just the outcome of a “gladsome
mind,” a flow of good spirits undisturbed by the thought of care
or trouble. This persistent “cheerfulness,” to describe it by our
inadequate language, stands their possessors in good stead. The natural
gaiety of the Maoris, we are assured, comes to their aid when they
encounter hardship. They are full of fun even when short of food on a
journey.[162]
But the laughter of savages does not appear merely as a general sign
of gaiety and rollicking spirits. It has become specialised into the
expression of particular mental conditions and attitudes similar to
those which are expressed by the laughter of our own children.
For example, we find instances of laughter occurring as a recoil from
something like timidity or shyness. Two boys, relates a missionary,
had had the small-pox and had not seen one another for a month. When
they met in the missionary’s house they began by shyly hiding from one
another their disfigured faces. At last they summoned courage, and
after many side looks at one another they faced round and burst out
laughing, the elder boy saying, “We are alike marked”.[163] Here escape
from _gêne_, from a feeling akin to shame, was the primary condition of
the laughter, though this was no doubt reinforced by a sense of triumph
as each discovered that he was, at least, not worse off than the other.
A writer tells us that in East Africa {229} “a slave never breaks a
thing without an instinctive laugh of pleasure”.[164] This laugh is set
down to the love of destruction; yet it may be, in part at least, like
that of a naughty child, a laugh of bravado hiding a consciousness of
naughtiness, a mode of drowning a nascent sense of shame; for it is
presumable, from what this same writer tells us, that an East African
slave does not destroy his owner’s property with impunity. At the same
time, one must allow that the process of destruction in itself may be
to a savage, as alas it often is to an English boy, an easy way to the
attainment of a “sudden glory”.
Savages appear to resemble children more clearly in their introduction
of jocose attack into their play. Here we see an analogy between the
mental attitude of a savage and that of an older child. Nothing comes
out more plainly in the reports on these uncivilised peoples than their
fondness for teasing, including practical jokes.
The love of teasing is testified to by more than one writer. A good
authority tells us that savages “tease one another much more freely and
jokingly (scherzhaft) than Europeans”.[165] This fondness for teasing
comes out strongly in their mimicries of one another’s defects, a
point to be illustrated presently. In certain cases, the teasing, as
with our own boys, is apt to take on a decidedly rough form. A lady,
writing of the inhabitants of Funafuti, observes: “It is thought a good
practical joke in Funafuti for a girl to saw an unsuspecting youth with
a pandanus leaf,” which produces a very painful scratch: “a good deal
of laughter on the one side and volubility on the other is the usual
result of this joke”.[166] {230}
Practical jokes grow out of the teasing instinct: they are new
inventions which take the victim by surprise, if they do not distinctly
mislead. The savage intelligence is quite boyish in the fecundity of
its invention in this domain.
The younger folk seem to practise rude jokes very like those carried
out by our own youngsters. Here is an instance. A young African negro,
seeing an old woman carrying a pumpkin, approached her and shouted that
there was something on her head. She forgot all about the pumpkin,
shrieked at the thought of some hideous object on her head, and ran
forward, allowing her tormentor laughingly to pick up the prize she had
let fall.[167] As is natural, these practical jocosities are sometimes
directed, with a certain caution, of course, against the European. A
young savage of Tasmania once slyly removed a bag of shell-fish laid
down by a sailor at the foot of a rock, and let him search for it in
vain, and, when tired of his joke, replaced the bag, showing himself
“highly diverted” at the trick he had played the European.[168]
As with ourselves, these practical jokes are wont to be paid back, and
with “interest”. A story is told of certain Hottentots who played off a
joke on some sleeping companions by shooting a couple of arrows close
to them, which made them start up and hurry for arms to their waggons,
where they were received with a shout of laughter. The victims of this
false alarm afterwards paid out the perpetrators. They succeeded in
terrifying them by a skilful imitation of the roar of a lion, which
drove them into camp screaming with terror.[169] In other cases the
{231} practical joke may be retaliative of some serious annoyance,
and may even be inflicted on some European “superior”. Miss Kingsley
relates how some of her West African “ladies” had been piqued by the
employee of a trading company, who tried to get them apart, when
planting manioc, so as to hinder them from talking. They took their
playful revenge by making a haycock over their tyrant and shouting:
“Get along, white man! I ’spectable married woman,” and so forth. She
gives another instance of this disposition to playful punishment in her
ladies. A young black official had been rude to some of them, whereupon
they resorted to the broader joke of throwing him into “the batter that
passes for ‘water’”.[170]
Closely connected with these modes of teasing, we have the practice of
taking off bodily defects by mimicry and by nicknames. These modes of
playful attack appear to be directed most commonly against outsiders,
but instances are given of a discreet mimicry of a fellow-tribesman
in his absence. It seems probable, though I have not found the fact
brought out explicitly, that much of the amusement derived by these
simple folk from their nightly talks, which are made gay with laughter,
consists in teasing attacks on the bodily defects or peculiarities of
certain members; though, from the evidence forthcoming, one would infer
that a choral laughter over the stranger is the more usual feature in
these social entertainments.
In all this mirthful teasing it is easy to see much that strikes us as
cruel, or, at least, as unfeeling. It is only natural that the hilarity
of peoples low down in the scale of culture should now and again take
on this aspect; as when, for example, they are said to laugh exultantly
at {232} the struggles of a drowning man.[171] Yet, on the whole, the
merriment of these peoples, when the butt is a fellow-tribesman, though
undoubtedly rough and often very coarse, does not seem to be so brutal
as one might expect.
We can understand the diversion of so large an amount of savage mirth
into these practical channels—teasing, bantering and playing-off jokes
upon members of ones tribe, by reflecting that laughter is a social
process, and plays, as we shall see presently, a large part in the
smooth working, if not also in the very maintenance, of the social
fabric.
In order to see the meaning of this teasing laughter, we must note the
way in which it is accepted. There is no doubt, to begin with, that
savages have by nature a lively dislike to being laughed at. It would
be strange indeed if this were not so, seeing that both the monkeys
below them and the white men above them display this aversion. This
seems to have been specially noted in the case of certain races. The
Weddas of Ceylon, who, as we have seen, have not impressed all visitors
as laughter-loving, show a marked displeasure at being made the butt
of a joke. We are told that they are much provoked (gereizt) when they
are laughed at (ausgelacht). It is related of one of these men that,
when during a dance he was thus treated by a European, he shot an arrow
at the laugher.[172] Poor old folk among ourselves will, we know, do
much the same when they are jeered at by {233} incautious boys, and
even a youth has been known to shy a stone at a too robust jeerer. This
dislike of being made the object of a facetious attention holds good
of other savages as well. A writer tells us that a common fireside
amusement among certain savages is to tease the women till they become
angry, which always produces great merriment. The teasing, it is added,
is of a rough and not very decent kind.[173] Further evidence of this
distaste for the douche of a voluble laughter is supplied by the
curious ordeals of the Greenlanders, to be spoken of presently.
On the other hand, there is ample evidence to show that the rough
jocosities of the teasing game are, as a rule, accepted in good part.
The youth who bore the biting satire of the pandanus leaf seems to
compare favourably in this respect with a London policeman, who
recently complained in court of the soft attentions paid him by a lady
of the East End in tickling some part of his official visage with her
dainty feather. Sometimes we are distinctly told that jokes are taken
in good part, so long as they are seen to be intended as such. So of
the African Hottentots and Kafirs, according to the authority already
quoted.[174] Of the Tahitians it is said that the jests played off at
their expense are never taken in ill part.[175]
It is evident that the rougher kinds of jocosity here described allow
considerable scope for something of the spirit of superiority and
contempt. One fears that this was felt to be present, for example, by
the women victimised by the men’s coarse teasing. As with boys, so with
savages, we may suppose that playful attack does not always respect its
limits, but that now and again it allows itself {234} to be infected by
the brutish element in man. Nor is this surprising when we remember how
much of so-called humour in civilised men owes its piquancy to the same
brutish ingredient.
This attitude of superiority and contempt seems, as one might have
expected, to be more apparent in what may be called the extra-tribal
direction of jocosity, more particularly in the common laughter at
members of other rival and possibly hostile tribes. In certain cases
we are told that this is of the nature of mockery and ridicule. Among
savages and early communities, writes one authority, when their
chieftain sat in his hall with his warriors, they amused themselves
by turning enemies and opponents into mockery, laughing at their
weaknesses, joking on their defects, giving them nicknames, and so
forth.[176] The savage—again like a boy—is apt to be a vain sort of
fellow, and to think that his ways are a lot better than those of
the rest of mankind. Hence he will, with something of contempt in
his heart, laugh at the bungling efforts of men of another tribe to
kill a turtle, and will give a nickname to the white man or take off
with admirable mimicry some of his crazes, such as his passion for
road-making or for bartering.
Yet it would, I think, be an error to treat this laughter at the
outsider as a form of serious ridicule, with its feeling of the
corrective superior. It is, even when lightly touched with contempt,
savage play, and has for its chief ingredient the love of fun, and that
delight in the mere contemplation of what is foreign and odd which the
savage shares with his ethnic betters.
One characteristic of this savage jocosity is so frequently referred
to by travellers that I cannot pass it by. We have seen that the
teasing of the women is apt to take {235} on an indecent form. We are
told, again and again, that savage jokes are commonly low and immoral.
The coarser the joke, we are informed, the better it is liked by
the natives of the Gold Coast.[177] The jests of the natives of the
islands in the Pacific are said to be “low and immoral to a disgusting
degree”.[178]
Possibly the European is not permitted to know the worst of this
aspect of savage mirth. It is easy, however, to give it too serious
a significance. To the simpler feeling of savages, untrammelled by
the laws of decency as civilised people know them, there may be no
suggestion here of a delight in the immoral as such. Their laughter may
well indicate the fact that for them an undisguised reference to what
we insist on hiding up has in it nothing improper; that they are just
within sight of the stadium of culture at which convention begins to
brand such references as obscene. Young children among ourselves will,
I believe, often laugh at such open and direct mention of unmentionable
things and much in the same way. It is hardly more in many cases, I
surmise, than a little bravado, a glorying in doing something unusual
which they are beginning to suspect is forbidden, though this is no
doubt apt to be accompanied by a perception of the indignity done by
this uncovering to the person involved.[179]
We may now turn to those forms of savage laughter which involve a more
disinterested contemplation of things, and a rudimentary sense of their
ludicrous phases. There {236} is no doubt that the enjoyment of the
droll side of their world fills a large place in the life of savages.
One may conjecture that it is a larger pastime in their case than in
that of most boys; for though the intellect of a savage may not surpass
that of a boy, his experience and matured good sense enable him to
judge of the unseemly and the incongruous with considerable skill and
quickness, and to derive much mirth from the contemplation of them.
The simplest form of this merriment, serving, as in the case of
the child, as a bridge from joyous expansion under a new sensuous
excitement to an appreciation of the odd, is the common laughter of
savages at what is strikingly new to them, and at the same time takes
their fancy. For example, the natives of Borneo were very much amused
at a piano, and when they saw the dampers of the keys jumping up and
down they “fairly laughed aloud”.[180] In like manner the Indians of
Hudson Bay took a compass for a toy and laughed at it, refusing to
accept the owner’s account of its use.[181] These are pretty clear
examples of a mirthful delight at something which is new, devoid
of import, and appealing to the play-appetite. The later stages of
the laughter at the lively little compass-toy were, perhaps, more
expressive of a dim sense of the absurdity of the suggestion that a
dear wee play-thing could do such marvels. This gleeful greeting of
what is at once new and exhilarating to sense answers in the case of
these simple people to what in ourselves is joyous admiration. Thus,
we read of certain African ladies, wives of a king, who expressed
their delight at European works of art by repeated loud bursts of
laughter.[182] Our own children show us now and again how the new, when
it not only captures the sense by its novelty, {237} but holds it by
its charm, may evoke this purely mirthful greeting, as free from the
stiff attitude of curiosity as it is from fearsomeness.[183]
It is a good step from this childish abandonment to the fun of a new
toy-like thing to the recognition of something as foreign and opposed
to the tribal custom. In these simple communities the unwritten laws
of custom play a most important part. Violations of them on the part
of any tribesman are apt to be dealt with seriously. This at once
tends to limit the range of savage laughter; the pressure of custom is
too tyrannical to allow of a full display of the odd and irregular in
human behaviour. These elements of the amusing have accordingly to be
supplied from without; and they are supplied in good measure, partly by
other neighbouring tribes whose manners are observable, and to a still
larger extent by the Europeans who visit them with a virtuous intention
to reform and civilise.
Let us first take a glance at the hilarious appreciation of the _other_
tribe’s ways. The spectacle of the foreigner will grow particularly
entertaining when he seems to bungle in doing something which is
perfectly familiar to the observer’s own tribe. The Tahitians, it
seems, are laughed at by the dwellers in the neighbouring islands
when they try to kill a turtle by pinching its throat. As may be
supposed, the trick, so useful to the beast, of drawing in the head
gives a veritable look of the absurd to these attempts. So, too, the
enlightened people of one island drew voluminous amusement from the
news that those of another island who had just come into possession
of the novelty, a pair of scissors, tried to sharpen them by baking
them.[184] These two illustrations show a dim apprehension of the
fitness of things as {238} determined, not by the relative standard of
“my way,” but by an objective standard.
The field in which they cull most of their facetious enjoyment of
the doings of outsiders would seem to be the ways of their white
visitors. There the differences, the departure from “our way” and
the inability to acquire this are great enough to appeal strongly to
their crude sense of the ludicrous. They see the odd white people
do a number of things which strike them as extraordinary and quite
useless. If the Englishman laughs at the foreigner for not taking
his morning tub, the simple savage will turn the tables by making
merry over our elaborate washings. Thus the Fuegians, though living
much in the water, have no idea of washing themselves; accordingly
“when Europeans first came among them, the sight of a man washing his
face seemed to them so irresistibly ludicrous that they burst into
shrieks of laughter”.[185] Here is an example of a rather more complex
feeling in presence of new-fangled European ways. It seems that a
South African Prince, presumably as a compliment to the white man’s
custom, wished to shave himself and, as our youths frequently do on
first attempting the feat, cut himself. He then asked his European
visitor to perform the office for him. The natives present “stood mute
with admiration during the whole performance, gazing with the utmost
eagerness in their countenances, and bursting at length into a general
peal of laughter—this being their customary mode of expressing delight,
astonishment, nay even embarrassment and fear.”[186] The last part of
this statement is a little loose, since, as we have seen, it is not so
much the astonishment, the embarrassment, or the fear in itself, which
laughter expresses, as a relaxation of the strain involved in these
attitudes. {239}
The laughter excited is of a rather more intellectual kind when the
action of the white man presents itself as absurd, not merely because
it rudely diverges from the customs of the natives, but because it
involves something out of the range of their comprehension, and so
appears incredible. It is then that the white man shows his superiority
in evoking laughter: his arts, his apparatus—when like the photographic
camera they do not excite fears—are apt to evoke incredulous laughter.
A traveller in South Africa had learned some sentences of the speech
of a tribe (the Sichuana language) from his man. He then wrote them
down and read them off before the man. This simple fellow laughed
“most heartily” when his white master told him that it was the marks
he had made in the book which showed him what he was to say.[187] A
child would pretty certainly join the savage in laughing at the idea
of getting sounds out of the inert, stupid-looking word-symbols, if it
were suddenly introduced to him in this way.
When the white man’s doings are not absolutely new, he may expose
himself to the laughter of these merry folk by the odd manner of them.
One would like to know all the jokes which the natives of South Africa,
of Polynesia, and the other abodes of the mirthful “Naturkind” have had
over the dress, the gestures, and the speech of their white visitors.
Yet this would be hard to get at. We do know, however, how they are
wont to greet some of our highly civilised performances. This is the
way in which some Tasmanian women behaved on a first introduction
to the European manner of singing. They listened attentively while
it lasted; then some applauded by loud shouts; others laughed to
splitting, while the young girls, {240} no doubt more timid, remained
silent.[188] This laughter was, presumably, more than the expression of
a wild delight. Those who laughed may be supposed to have been the most
susceptible to the absurdity of this unheard of manner of song. In the
case of the closely allied art of dancing, we are distinctly told that
our highly approved style may appear ridiculous to the savage onlooker.
The Sumatrans, writes one authority, have very slow dances which are
thought to be ludicrous by Europeans. Yet, funnily enough, they think
our customary dances “to the full as ludicrous”. They compared our
minuets to the fighting of two game cocks.[189] Did they also see a
galop, one wonders, and if so, what did the lovers of slow dances say
about this? The “refinements” of the arts of civilised men are ever apt
to appear laughable to those lower down.
The laughter of these uninstructed people grows loud when the clever
white man fails to achieve one of their own simple accomplishments.
More particularly, his inability to pronounce the sounds of their
language seems to be a prolific source of merriment. The Tasmanians,
writes one whom we have quoted more than once, often laughed to
splitting when, wishing to repeat their words, “I made mistakes or
pronounced them badly”.[190] Another traveller, speaking of the natives
of the West Coast of Vancouver’s Island, writes: “That they had some
standard of correct speech is evident from the readiness of the
children to ridicule a stranger who mispronounces native words”.[191]
A third example comes from Borneo. The girls, a visitor reports, made
Europeans repeat sentences of their language after them, and burst
out into loud laughter “either at our pronunciation or at the {241}
comical things they had made us utter”.[192] Nothing, perhaps, more
clearly exhibits the ludicrous value of the violation of a perfectly
uniform custom than a mispronunciation of language.[193] Nor is this
all. It seems absurd to a savage, just as it does to an average English
child, that the foreigner should fail to do what seems to him not
merely to require no effort, but to be something one cannot help doing,
like laughing itself or crying. No doubt some feeling of superiority
to the foreign ignoramus enters into the enjoyment here. Perhaps the
children of Vancouver’s Island felt this superiority most of all. In
some cases, however, we are distinctly told that the ineptitude of
Europeans, when it provokes laughter, calls out also the soothing
accompaniment of kindly encouragement.
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.
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![220]
In these crude forms of art we probably find traces of the influence
of European models. There are, however, stories {251} which seem to
be a perfectly spontaneous growth. Of these it is enough to refer to
the originals of the delightful tales of Uncle Remus, the substance of
which, as their author tells us, he obtained from the blacks in the
American plantations.[221] Miss Kingsley writes to me of these: “I know
the tales are not made up. I struck the Tar Baby Stories in the Lower
Congo”. It may be added that the device of the tar baby is to be found
in its essentials in a collection of African stories.[222]
Our study seems to tell us that savage laughter is like our own in
representing different levels of refinement. Much of it is just naïve,
unthinking gaiety, like that of the little girl spoken about in the
preceding chapter. Co-existing with this infantile gaiety we have the
coarse brutal forms of laughter which we associate with the rougher
kind of schoolboy. Along with these lower forms we find higher ones,
in which some amount of reference to social standards is discoverable.
Lastly, we may detect here and there, as in the story of the man
tickled by the idea of dead men going about _sans_ arms, legs, etc.,
and of him who jocosely stripped a humbug of his disguise, germs of
a more thoughtful laughter; and on the other hand, in the kindly
tempering of the laughter of the girls at the Englishwoman’s inability
to make mats, a movement towards sympathetic laughter. In other words,
we detect the dim beginnings of that complex feeling or attitude which
we call humour. It seems probable that the quality, if not also the
quantity, improves as we pass from the lowest and most degraded to the
higher savage tribes.[223] {252}
Hence, no doubt, the difficulty which has been felt by travellers
in describing the common characteristics of the hilarity of savage
tribes. Miss Kingsley writes to me with respect to the humour of the
West African: “It is peculiar, it is not child-like—it is more feminine
in quality, though it is very broad or coarse. It is difficult to
describe. I can only say what seems to me an excellent joke seems
so to him—there are many jokes neither of us can see the point of:
others, we chuckle over, superior persons look down on and would call
buffoonery.”[224]
One practical reflection to close with. Any civilised community which
has much to do in the way of managing the “lower races” would surely
be wise to take some heed of their love of fun. And this, because it
has been found that appeals to this side have been more effective than
the harsher measures to which even a gentle Briton may think himself
sometimes driven. An African missionary, already quoted, writes that in
cases where a disposition to quarrel shows itself “one joke is worth
ten arguments”.[225] This is borne out by one who has not much good to
tell of his savages, when he says of the East African that he delights
{253} in a joke “which manages him like a Neapolitan”.[226] In a
letter to me Miss Kingsley writes: “I have always found I could chaff
them into doing things that other people could not get them to do, with
blows—I could laugh them out of things other people would have to blow
out of them with a gun”.
{254}