Gilpin observer., 1920-09-23
TWO GREAT JOKES
Veteran Quips That Undoubtedly
Are Centuries Old.
-Jests Having to Do With the Mother.
in-Law and the Intoxicated Man
Always Have Power to
Cause a Laugh.

Some one once said that there are
only two jokes in the world, the
drunken man joke and the mOther-in-
law Joke. There are many variations
of the two themes, many ways of pre-
senting the two supremely comic fig
ures, but when we want to make each
other laugh we always go back either
to TIE drunken man or to the moth
-er-in-law.
The statement is an exaggeratiOn.
There are other jokes. The curate's
egg joke, for instance, which has
nothing to do either with drunkards
or mothers-in-law, and the more recent
better ole" joke. But 1t remains to
be seen whether either of these jokes
will survive, will amuse generation
after generation as the two great
Jokes do. For the drunken man and
the motherin-law are very old jokes.
They have proved their worth by pro-
voking. laughter for thousands of
years and they are still the most pop
ular jokes there are. A comedian i'm
personating drunkard is sure of his
laugh, and public speaker, finding
to say the words "mother-in-law" to
provoke full-throated merriment.
OF tie two the drunken man joke
seems to be the older. The Spartans
knew it, and used to make slaves
drunk so that their sons, laughing
heartily, might avoid the vice through
fear of ridicule. The Jews knew it.
Their ancient literature is singularly
poor in comedy. There are not half
a dozen jokes in the whole Old Testa-
ment, but the drunken man joke is
there. Isaiah, a grim old puritan Of
statesman, made it, and made it in
an excellent form. The mother-in-
law joke Is not so old, but it goes back
to classical times.
We find it in Plutarch. "a man
once threw stone at dog and hit
his mother-in-law. Not such bad
shot after ALL he said" That is Plut-
arch's version of tie joke. It is so
neat and epigrammatic that the joke
itself must have been old in his time.
He could scarcely have achieved such
perfect form unless he had been
working on long familiar idea.
But ancient as these jokes are they
have lost none of their freshness for
us. Time, il appears, cannot stale
their infinite variety. We may fairly
suppose that ttey will last as long as
our race does. America may go dry,
but the great comic tradition of the
drunken man will survive.
The bolshevists may abolish mar
riage, but men will always remember
what marriage was because they will
always laugh when anyone says
>'mother-in-law" We may picture to
ourselves the last survivors of our
race shiverng in icy caves while the
sun shoulders to extinction. They will
no doubt cheer TIE desperate hard
ship of their winter by inventing fresh
quips about drunken men and moth
ers-in-law.
No other joke seems to possess this
quality of endurance. Indeed, the
path Of mans progress through the
ages is strewed with the corpses of
dead jokes which once were vital
enough, but somehow missed immor-
tality. There Is the doctor" joke. for
Instance. The ancients knew it.
physician, heal thyself." is proven
bial form of 1t. The story Of the med
ical man who went out hunting is an
other version of 1t. To-day at least"
said friend who met him, "you will
Kill nothing" II survived down to the
middle of the last century, and even
In our own time G. Il. SLaw has AT.
tempted to galvanize it into fresh hfa.
But the joke is really dead. We no
longer laugh spontaneously ar the
thought Of a doctor, though in its day
the doctor joke was certainly good
,One.-Edinburgh Scotsman.