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The Dear Old Jokes

(By Leo. Fanning)

New jokes may come and go, but the oldsters will go on for ever. They may grow new whiskers and get artificial teeth, but they will not pass away. The old-time humourists naturally picked the basic things for their jesting, and as the world cannot be always changing its basic things, the old foundations must endure for the new humour.

* * *

“I catch you there. What about golf?” somebody may exclaim. Well, the cold truth is that the quips about golf are merely variants of older things. The golf “language” stories were preceded by anecdotes of bullock-drivers' profanity which was itself a continuation of an older set of similar outbursts (connected with ships' mates, troopers, Billingsgate beldams and Cockney cabmen).

The jokes based on missing the ball have hosts of parents in other pastimes, including amateur nail-driving (the old hammer-and-thumb comicality). Anyhow, golf jokes are only a side-line–upstart ragwort on the fringe of the broad field of British humour.

* * *

When did the mother-in-law first appear in jokes? Somehow it has always seemed to me that the mother-in-law jokes have less application to New Zealand's social conditions than to those of other countries. However, this jesting is on the wane. Probably the new fashions and the new dances and other new things have helped to put the mother-in-law on a new plane, for she is at liberty to enjoy her cigarette with the juniors who are hardly distinguishable from her, and to step it, hop it, trot it, or tot it with the liveliest of them.

* * *

Has anybody ever looked through a copy of “Punch” without seeing a joke about the plumber or his mate? The plumber's leaden thumb seems to press heavily on old England. One wonders whether the plumbers and their mysterious mates in the Old Country are secretly sworn to make a maximum of mess whenever the bath-room tap has dropsy, or whether an outrageous alliance has been arranged between carpenters and plumbers so that the mending of the kitchen sink will require a reconstruction of the dining-room, a semi-demolition of the drawing-room and a new roof on the scullery. Happily, New Zealand's plumbers do not seem to have become so wicked as the practitioners in Britain.

* * *

Women's hats, her clothing and unclothing are never out of the comic papers, and never will be. However, woman is supremely indifferent to gibes about her dress or undress. It is doubtful whether any style, ordered by the fashion dictators, was ever changed by man's ridicule. The “reformed dress” (baggy knickers, etc.) of thirty years or so ago was not swished out by man's scoffing; it simply did not “take on” among the women then. Still, the knickers may yet spread from the golf-course and hunting-fields to the streets and salons. “Shorts” may be already seen on tennis-courts and on the roads and tracks where tramping girls enjoy the great out-doors.

* * *

The survival of the hen-pecked husband in British jocosity indicates that the proportion of overawed and overwhelmed husbands is much greater in Britain than in New Zealand. No doubt these sunny isles have some husbands who think more than twice before they speak once at home, and promptly hand up their pay without deductions, but the Government Statistician could probably assure us that those models of domestic training would not be more than 50 per cent. of the married men. Unfortunately the term “conjugal condition” on the census paper does not produce all the information that the curious world would like.

* * *

The flirtatious husband-to put it mildly—figures frequently in the printed jests. The merriment swings on his detected dalliance with the cook, the housemaid, the nurse-girl, the typiste—almost anything skirted, provided she is pretty. This type of man is usually presented as one who is in some awe of his wife, and has very furtive outbreaks of “sheikism.”

* * *

The handsome bashful curate (formerly bombarded with knitted slippers and stuffed with cream-puffs at innumerable tea-parties) is not nearly so much in print as he used to be. Perhaps the type has changed, but the writer cannot say, as not many curates seek his company.

So also the missionary and the cannibal are seldom served up nowadays, but they still have an occasional turn. Perhaps the best of the thousands of jokes on that subject is this little verse:—

“I shouldn't have eaten that mission steak,”
Said the cannibal chief with a frown;
“For oft have I heard of the old proverb—
‘You can't keep a good man down.’”

* * *

In England and America spring poets continue to have their sad contacts with pitiless editors year after year. New Zealand does not run much to spring versing because this country has not the seasonal miracle which releases some of those northern countries from the cold deadlock of a long winter. In the greater part of New Zealand, an evergreen country, the pageant of the seasons is not so dramatic, not so spectacular, as in Great Britain, and therefore spring does not make for so much excitement. page 7 There is the annual reporting of the “Yellow Rain” (the showers which dye themselves with fine pollen), but usually spring glides in almost imperceptibly. Therefore the spring-poet jokes fall rather flat in New Zealand.

* * *

The person who has been overserved with liquor is a perpetual “property” of the professional humourist. How oft have we all seen the pictures of the crushed hat at the back or side of the head, a collar-end flying loose, and the legs which seem to be swaying like sea-weed! Sometimes the “sozzled” one has come in late from the club, and is making queer replies from the stairs to a shouted questionnaire from his angry wife. Sometimes he is shaking hands with street fixtures, or is mistaking the full moon for the town-clock and is wondering what has happened to the hands. One way or another, the inebriate will hold his swaying place in the funny columns.

* * *

The absent-minded professor brings money to many joke-makers, but this is another of the kinds of jests that have less point in New Zealand than in older countries. The trouble in the Dominion is rather that the professors are not absent-minded enough for our peace and comfort.

Food is the basis of an unfailing supply of jokes. The bride's first pie—even in these days of ready-made fare—is still in the running. The steel-spring chicken, the tanned steak, the hair soup and other old acquaintances decline to die. Waiting for food (in restaurants) also yields its regular quota of jokes.

* * *

Other well-known and continuing figures in jokes are the engaged girl and her “catty” critic; the angler and his bag; the umbrella; the seedy actor; the office boy. Here is one of the best of the innumerable office-boy jokes:—

Some office boys will whistle,
And some will shout with glee;
A few will hum an old, old song,
But ours can do all three.

* * *

As with the dear old jokes in print, so with the dear old fooling on the stage. The slap-stick and big flat slippers of the hurly-burly comedian will always appeal to the public. They seem to be out of fashion at the moment, but they are not really out of favour. The people are more than ready to rejoice in them again. The kick on the coat-tails and the exclamatory “damn” will never fail to draw loud laughter.

Philosophers have written big books about the cause and effect in those matters—books that are not read, except by other philosophers.