Ancient humours

That joke about "taking umbrage", mentioned in the previous post, isn't funny, of course. It's more that it's interesting, historically, that people must once have thought it was funny.

You can make it funny, indirectly, by pretending to think it's funny, yourself, in which case it becomes character humour, category, "I'm mad, me! Woot! Woot! Now why did the chicken cross the road!?" Ah, Rik Mayal, where the hell are you? (Don't answer that.)

Anyway, here's a Victorian joke. It probably went into Christmas crackers once, and was considered a real side-splitter:

Q. What happens when the dawn breaks?
A. The pieces go into mourning.

You know, "morning", geddit? Actually it's kind of poetic, though, isn't it?


Laon