From A Pennyworth of Puns, [by Rev. David Macrae, Glasgow: Morison Brothers, c. 1897], pp. 3-48.
A PENNYWORTH OF PUNS. *
THEODORE HOOK was once punning on names, when a gentleman named Dunlop defied him to pun on his name. “Nothing easier,” said Hook, “lop off half the name, and it’s done!”
It was a model pun, so neat, so pat, so prompt, so perfectly fitted to the occasion.
Punning on names is the commonest, because the easiest, form of this species of wit. Many names, indeed, present a constant temptation both to witty, and also, unhappily, to dull punsters; and people who bear such names as Bliss, Buncombe, Bull, Cockle, Gamble, Tawse, Ghost, or Funck — all of them names out of the Directory — must get weary of the monotonous jokes cracked at their expense and intended for their delectation. I remember a minister of the name of Gammon, who was so worried and annoyed at the melancholy and endless joking provoked by his name, that he discarded it, and assumed in its stead a high-sounding, aristocratic name, under which he thereafter discharged the duties of his office with more success, or, at any rate, with greater comfort.
4Though many puns made in connection with names are very poor, some are sufficiently ingenious, or sufficiently amusing, to be worth quoting.
The poor shopkeeper whose account a scamp of the name of Owen More ran away leaving unpaid, found (let us hope) a little comfort in the innocent couplet which he composed to commemorate the unhappy event: —
Owen More has run away,
Owin’ more than he can pay.
George Colman was once asked if he knew Theodore Hook. “Oh yes,” replied Colman, “Hook and I (eye) are old acquaintances.”
Here is a wedding pun which was delivered at the wedding feast by a friend of Mr John Fowler when that gentleman married Miss Jane Holiday: —
Some Fowlers bag widgeon; some Fowlers bag teal;
But this Fowler of ours has bagg’d him a wife;
Some men ask a holiday, this day or that,
But Fowler has ask’d one to last him for life.
“Here’s a strange coincidence,” said the wife to her husband, as she scanned the marriage column of the paper at the breakfast table; “a William Strange married to a Martha Strange.” “Strange indeed,” replied paterfamilias; “but I expect the next news will be a little stranger.”
5The punning couplet on the “Old Dog Tray” of the popular song must have been the work of a paradoxologist: —
Old Dog Tray’s “ever faithful” they say,
But the dog that is faithful can never be Tray.
The following verse recalls the time when Charles Dickens was an unknown youth, writing over the pseudonym of “Boz,” and when public curiosity was keenly excited to know who the author of these famous sketches really was: —
“Who the dickens “Boz” could be
Puzzled many a learned elf;
But time unveil’d the mystery,
And “Boz” appear’d as Dickens’ self.
Macdougall, of Paisley, was well known in his day as a great wit, and many of his jokes are preserved. This was one: — Sir Thomas Coates had left the Rev. Mr France’s church and gone to Dr Brown’s. Macdougall saw Dr Brown, the week after, speaking in the street to Dr Cameron Lees, who was also, at that time, a minister in Paisley. “There,” said Macdougall, “there’s Brown, who has been stealing old Coates from France, and now he’s telling big Lees about it.”
Another minister in the West of Scotland, as well known for his wit as for his eloquence, was met returning from the marriage of a brother minister to a very tall lady of the name of Home. 6 “I’ve just,” he said, “been seeing J—— to his long Home!”
Mr Spurgeon, in reading out a list of subscribers to one of his charities, made running comments and jokes as he went on that kept the audience in great good humour. Coming to a Mr King who had given five shillings, he said, “There’s a king who has given his crown!” Coming next to a Mr Pigge, who had given a guinea, he exclaimed, “There’s a guinea-pig!”
But it is not often that jokes, even on odd names, have so keen an edge as the one that went the round of the House of Commons when Dr Goodenough had been preaching to the Peers.
’Tis well enough that Goodenough
Before the Lords should preach;
For sure enough they’re bad enough
He undertakes to teach.”
The following playful lines were sent to a young lady when she married a Mr Gee: —
Sure madam, by your choice, your taste we see;
What’s “good,” or “great,” or “grand” without a “G”?
A “godly glow” must sure on “G” depend,
Or “oddly low” our righteous thoughts must end:
The want of “G” all gratitude effaces;
And, without “G,” the graces would run races!
Nero made Seneca’s name his condemnation; se neca — kill thyself. He made him commit suicide.
7The following rhyme, written by the witty Dean Swift in praise of “Moll,” may be included in the category of name-puns: —
Mollis abuti,
Has an acuti,
No lasso finis,
Molli divinis.
Punch is responsible for the following, which he published under the title, “Very like a Whale.”
The first of all the royal infant males
May well the title take of Prince of Wales;
Because ’tis clear, to seamen and to lubber,
Babies and whales are both inclined to blubber.
Names of places also furnish abundant material for puns. For instance, “Go to Bath,” the doctor said to a dirty patient.
Let gardeners go to Botany Bay,
And shoeblacks to Japan;
Bachelors to the United States,
And maids to Isle of Man.
An Englishman coming by train to Glasgow for the first time, and passing Motherwell Junction, said to the gentleman opposite, with whom he had been chatting. “Queer name, ‘Mother-well.’ Is there a ‘Father-well’ next?” “No,” was the reply, “but we come immediately to Both-well.”
The name of a book sometimes provokes punning, but I hope the man who wrought the titles 8 of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” into the following lines was not seriously the worse of his effort: —
That Homer should a bankrupt be,
Is not so very Odd-d’ye-see;
If it be true, as I’m instructed,
So Ill-he-had his books conducted.
In 1831 that prince of punsters, Tom Hood, became acquainted with the Duke of Devonshire, at whose request he sent a list of book titles for a “blind door” in the library at Chatsworth. Some of them are very witty, for instance: — “Dante’s Inferno; or, Description of Van Demon’s Land;” “Lamb’s Recollections of Suet;” “Plurality of Livings, with regard to the Common Cat;” “Boyle on Steam;” “Lamb on the Death of Wolfe;” “Kosciusko on the Right of the Poles to Stick up for Themselves;” John Knox on Death’s Door;” Cooke’s Specimens of the Sandwich Tongue;” “Cursory Remarks on Swearing.”
To this list the following additions have been suggested: —
A Treatise on Coach-building: by Lord Brougham.
Wolffe’s Treatment of Sheep.
Diary of a late Shoeblack: by Samuel Warren.
The Thirty-nine Articles; or, the Unprotected at the Railway Station. A Story of the Great Plague.
Moore’s Residence in Venice.
9Boyle on the Gums.
Walker’s Excursions to the Birthplaces of Distinguished Travellers.
Bunyan on the Foot: by a Pilgrim.
Noah’s Essay on how to deal with the Floating Population.
Family Jars: a Treatise on the Most Ancient Forms of Domestic Earthenware.
The word “pun,” looking to its etymology, is derived by some from a Welsh term signifying “equivalent,” and used of any word that applies equally to two things. But in order to provide a pun in the popular sense, and give piquancy to the play upon words, the two things that are thus unexpectedly combined should be remote from one another, and the connection should be grotesque.
Other lexicographers trace the word “pun” to the old Anglo-Saxon punian, meaning a knocking or tossing about, and referring in puns to the liberty taken of tossing a word or expression, in a laughable way, out of one of its senses into another.
Some people are disposed to look down on puns as a poor species of wit. The reason probably is that punning seems so easy; that there are so many temptations to try it, and that so many do try it who have little wit and less discrimination. Poor — very poor — puns accordingly abound. Some 10 people in company are always punning, or attempting to pun, often with the most lamentable result. Hence the pun gets a bad name, and comes if for a discredit that belongs really to those who, without the gift of punning, are yet always trying their hands at it.
But punning has a very ancient reputation. Aristotle, in the eleventh chapter of his “Rhetoric,” describes several kinds of puns, which he calls paragrams, and classes amongst the beauties of good writing — producing instances of them out of some of the most eminent Greek authors. Cicero has some of his works sprinkled here and there with puns, and in his disquisition on oratory quotes quite a number as specimens of wit.
Quintilian and Longinus, however, sought to distinguish between puns and pure wit.
In our own country, the age in which punning had the highest repute was in the reign of James I., who was himself a good punster, and set the fashion. It was, and is, a perfectly legitimate form of wit, and is fitted to give a great deal of genuine amusement. Take a few specimens at random: —
Sydney Smith, passing a bye-street behind St Paul’s, heard two women abusing each other from opposite houses. “These two women will never agree,” said the wit; “they argue from different premises.”
11Jack Bannister, passing by a house that had been almost consumed by fire, asked whose it was. On being told that it was a hatter’s, “Ah,” said Bannister, “the loss will be felt.”
Or take the following: —
To win the maid the poet tries.
And sometimes writes to Julia’s eyes;
She likes a verse — but (cruel whim!)
She still appears a-verse to him.
A man who was asked if his watch was a lever, replied that he thought she must be, as he had to leave her at the watchmaker’s every month or two.
“This is what I call capital punishment,” said the boy to himself, when his mother locked him up in a closet where the preserves were kept.
A retired schoolmaster excused his passion for angling by saying that, from constant habit, he never felt quite himself unless when handling the rod.
The following morsel should be palatable to African travellers: —
The pilgrim o’er a desert wild
Need ne’er let want confound him,
For he at any time can eat
The sand which is around him.
It might seem odd that he could find
Such palatable fare,
Did we not know the sons of Ham
Were bred and muster’d there.
Two gentlemen out riding amused themselves by trying who should make the best pun about any person they met. Coming up by and by to two farmers on the road, one of the gentlemen drew up, and pulling out his snuff-box, said to one, as he offered it, “Do you snuff?” To which the farmer replied, as he took a pinch, “Ay, I snuff.” “And you?” said the gentleman to the other. “Ay, I snuff too.” “Then you are a pair of snuffers.” After riding on a little bit they met a man carrying a hare. “Hollo!” said the other gentleman, “is that your own hare, or is it a wig?”
Snuffing has suggested other puns besides the pair of snuffers. Here is one in rhyme: —
Knows he who never took a pinch,
Nosey! the pleasure thence that flows:
Knows he the titillating joys,
Which my nose knows?’
O nose! I am as fond of thee
As any mountain of its snows;
I cherish thee, and feel that pride
A Roman nose!
It is told of another snuffer, that when he passed his snuff-box across to a gentleman with whom he had been talking, but who replied with thanks that he did not snuff, said, “So you are not a friend at a pinch!”
13Here, again, is a little dictionary of kissing: —
Buss — to kiss.
Sillybus — to kiss the hand instead of the lips.
Erebus — to kiss in the dark.
Blunderbuss — to kiss the wrong person.
Omnibus — kisses all round.
These are specimens of punning. It is merely a playing upon words, but there is genuine fun in it notwithstanding.
The pun may present itself in a great variety of forms. For instance: —
“Stick to the subject,” as the king said to the flea.
“None of your unkind reflections,” as the ugly woman said to the looking-glass.
“Music by Handel,” as the musician said when he saw a man grinding away at a barrel-organ.
Wise advice to a toper — Don’t let your spirits go down.
Loose habits generally stick tighter to a fellow than any other kind.
The man who ate his dinner with the fork of a river has been attempting to spin a mountain top.
“Grace before meat,” as the young lady said when she laced herself too tight to swallow.
The youth who stole a kiss has been discharged on condition that he will not embrace another opportunity.
14The geological character of the rock on which English drunkards split is said to be quarts.
“Right about face,” as the man said when he wanted his friend to publish a treatise on physiognomy.
Wanted to know — If keeping up a ball till daylight does not betray a party spirit? Wanted further to know — How to split a difference? And finally — If it be true that the first apple was eaten by the first pair?
When someone, reading a list of titles and dignities, asked what was meant by Companions of the Bath, one of the company suggested soap and towels.
It was surely somebody who had been studying the New Woman in some of her aspects who declared that it is woman herself, and not her wrongs, that ought to be re-dressed.
Some of the young ladies say that the times are so hard that the young men are not able to pay even their addresses.
The following play upon a word is said to have been written in a lady’s album by Professor Whewell: —
What was It?
A handless man a letter did write;
The dumb dictated it word for word;
It was read by one who had lost his sight;
And deaf was he who listened and heard.
Answer.
It was Nought that the handless man did write;
And Nought was read by his dumb compeer;
It was Nought that struck on the blind man’s sight;
And Nought on the deaf man’s ear.
For one and the same, as we all well know,
Are a cypher, and nought, and the letter O.
The following ingenious cipher, which partakes of the nature of punning, was also prepared by Professor Whewell at the request of a young lady: —
U 0 a 0, but I 0 U,
O 0 no 0, but O 0 me;
O let not my 0 a 0 go,
But give 0 0 I 0 U so.
These lines, when deciphered, read thus —
You sigh for a cipher, but I sigh for you,
O sigh for no cipher, but O sigh for me;
O let not my sigh for a cipher go,
But give sigh for sigh, for I sigh for you so.
I saw a series of alphabetic puns by a schoolboy, some of them not bad. Here are two or three: —
An apiarian minds his Bees,
A lounger minds his Ease,
An optician minds his Eyes,
A gardener minds his Peas,
Billiard markers mind their Cues,
A grocer minds his Teas,
And fools should mind Wise Heads.
The following play upon letters of the alphabet was composed in memory of Miss Ellen Gee, of Kew, who died in consequence of being stung in the eye: —
Peerless, yet hapless maid of Q,
Accomplished L——N G,
Never again shall I or U
Together sip our T.
For ah! the fates, I know not Y,
Sent mid the flowers a B,
Which venomous stung her in the I,
So that she could not see.
LN exclaimed, “Vile, spiteful B,
If ever I catch U
On jasmine, rosebud, or sweet P,
I’ll change your singing Q.
“I’ll send you like a lamb or U
Across the Atlantic C;
From our delightful village Q
To distant O Y E.
“A stream runs from my wounded I,
Salt as the briny C,
As rapid as the X or Y,
The O I O or D.
“Then fare thee ill, insensate B,
Who stung yet not knew Y,
Since not for wealthy Durham’s C
Would I have lost my I.”
They bear with tears, fair L——N G,
In funeral R A,
A clay cold corse now doomed to B,
While I mourn her D K.
17
Ye nymphs of Q, then shun each B;
List to the reason Y,
For should a B C U at T
He’ll surely sting your I.
Now, in a grave L-deep in Q
She’s cold as cold can be,
Whilst robins sing upon a U
Her dirge an L E G.
A wag, in extolling the value of our volunteers, points out that their avocations in civil life qualify them in a special degree for particular branches of the military service, and for particular functions in war. Surgeons, for instance, are fitted to excel as lancers or in mortar practice. Smiths should be foremost in double and single file; shopkeepers in counter-marching; pickpockets in rifle practice; lawyers in the grand charge; watchmakers in marking time; weavers in dressing; letterpress printers in forming lines and columns; lovers in presenting arms and saluting; the married at close order; farmers at drill; bankers in drafts and exchanges; teachers in infantry movements; Whigs in advancing; Radicals in advancing double-quick time; and Tories in standing at ease.
A pun may present itself in the form of a query, thus: —
Is a rudder a stern necessity?
Is the best salad for bored people, Lettuce alone?
18Can a train-whistle be described as a Notice of Motion?
Were the inhabitants of Gaul fond of bitters?
Do the people of Hungary appear half-starved?
If two coats of paint are enough for a house, would a third be a waste-coat?
Is there any perceptible improvement in the caterpillar when it turns over a new leaf?
When a man “cannot contain himself,” whether is it that he is too large or too small?
Can a baby that has fallen asleep be described as a form of kid-napping?
Can an ill-made dress be described as a bad habit?
Here, again, are some puns political: —
Among the men, what dire divisions rise —
For “Union” one, “No Union,” th’ other cries;
Shame on the sex that such dispute began,
Ladies are all for union — to a man!
More legitimate, and perhaps more universally applicable, is the other joke about the ladies — that however Conservative they may be before marriage, they all become “Home Rulers” after it.
The following will stand as a pun, if not as an argument: —
Taxes are equal, is a dogma which
I’ll prove at once, exclaim’d a Tory boor,
Taxation hardly presses on the rich,
And likewise presses hardly on the poor.
In these days of “Women’s Rights,” the following may prove true in one of its senses, but, let us hope, not in the other: —
Should women sit in parliament,
A thing unprecedented,
A great part of the nation then,
Would be Miss-Represented.
A cynical bachelor thinks if women get into Parliament, the following explanation of the word “Parliament” will be more applicable than ever: —
This long word comes only from parler, to speak,
As best etymologists trace;
So you see all is parle, and nothing is meant;
Too often the truth of the case.
A wit penned the following, on seeing the words Domus Ultima (“the Final Dwelling-place”) inscribed on the vault belonging to the Dukes of Richmond in Chichester Cathedral: —
Did he, who thus inscribed the wall,
Not read, or not believe, Saint Paul;
Who says there is, where’er it stands,
Another house, not made with hands?
Or may we gather from these words,
That house is not a House of Lords?
Leigh Hunt, in one of his essays, gives an amusing specimen of the clever kind of nonsense that even “the wisest men” can take delight in listening to, and passing round with their own 20 contributions. It is like a punning play upon the idea of dryness.
In a company of literary men, mention was made of a new book by an able man, who was yet a most uninteresting writer. One said, “Have you seen it?”
“Yes. Driest book I ever read.”
“Dry!” said the first. “It’s like a chip!”
“A chip’s an orange to it,” said another.
“It made me feel dust in my eyes,” said a third.
“It made me thirsty,” said a fourth.
“Yes,” said a fifth, “if you take it up at breakfast, it makes you drink four cups of coffee instead of two.”
“I had to call, at page 4, for beer,” said a sixth.
“They say it made two reviewers take to drinking,” said a seventh.
“I hear,” said an eighth, “they keep it lying now in hotels, to make people drink double. The landlord says, ‘A new book sir,’ and goes out and orders two neguses to be ready, as they are sure to be ordered within a few minutes.”
Said a ninth, “They say it dries up everything so rapidly, that it is likely to hurt the draining business.”
“Yes,” said a tenth, “but it is going to be a great blessing to Holland. The sea can’t come near it, and the Dutch are subscribing for it, to serve them instead of dykes.”
21We have all heard similar talk — nonsense, and yet witty nonsense — breaking in as a delightful variety and refreshment even in the midst of graver conversation.
Sometimes punning strikes one more for its ingenuity than for its wit. Take, for example, this actor’s advertisement: —
Dear public, you and I of late,
Have dealt so much in fun,
I’ll crack you now a monstrous, great,
Quadruplicated pun!
Like a grate full of coals I’ll glow,
A great full house to see;
And if I am not grateful too,
A great fool I must be.
The following riddles was written by Archbishop Whateley, who in vain offered £50 to any one who would guess it: —
When from the Ark’s capacious round
The world came forth in pairs,
Who was it that the first heard the sound
Of boots upon the stairs?
Some time afterwards, a correspondent in Once a Week offered this solution: —
To him who cons the matter o’er,
A little thought reveals
He heard it first who went before
Two pairs of soles and ’eels.
On which proffered solution, another correspondent offered the following criticisms: —
As Father Noah knew full well,
Fish, out of water feel,
It seems most likely that the Ark
Held neither sole nor eel.
Think yet again; it will be seen,
With water out, and none within,
A boot-less errand ’twould have been
For soles or eels to enter in.
Conundrums are — multitudes of them — simply puns hidden behind the question, and waiting to be discovered by the answerer. For example: —
Why is a postage stamp like a naughty boy? — Because it’s licked, and put in a corner.
What is the difference between a very young and a very old maid? — The one is careless and happy; the other is hairless and cappy.
What is it that never asks any questions, but requires many answers? — The street door.
What makes Treason reason, and Ireland wretched? — The absentee (T).
Why is a child with a cold like a wintry day? — It blows it snows (its nose).
Why are the makers of our big guns great thieves? — Because they rifle all the guns, forge all the materials, and steel all the gun-breeches.
Why it is a dangerous thing to sit in the free 23 seats at church? — Because you learn to be good for nothing.
How can it be shown that the lightest men in the three kingdoms are to be found on the Thames? — Because, while in Scotland there are men of Ayr, and in Ireland men of Cork, on the Thames you can always find lightermen.
When may a tune be properly called an air? — When it is produced by a wind instrument.
Why is a novelist the most extraordinary of animals? — Because his tale comes out of his head.
Why is blindman’s buff like sympathy? — Because it is a fellow feeling for a fellow-creature.
If the devil lost his tail, to whom would he go for treatment? — To a re-tailer of bad spirits.
When is a ship in love? — When she is attached to a buoy. When is her love serious? — When she wants a mate.
A Scotchman will appreciate the following: — Why is a baby’s cap like the moon in its third quarter? — Because it is on the wean.
How should a lover come to the door? — With a little ring, but not without a rap.
The following is like another conundrum in rhyme: —
No nutmeg can the largest be in nature —
The greatest one may come across a grater.
While many brilliant punsters might be named, perhaps the most brilliant, as well as the most 24 prolific, of them was Thomas Hood. Hood scattered puns in showers, like sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil.
Describing an encounter between a man and a lion, he said the man ran away with all his might, and the lion with all his mane.
On being shown a portrait of himself, very unlike the original, Hood declared that the artist had perpetrated a false-Hood.
His hint to hypochondriacs is not without its value — “Don’t fancy, every time you cough, that you are going to coughy-pot.”
Appealing against cruelty to animals, he reminds us that “bullocks don’t wear ox-ide of iron.”
To quicken our sympathy with the Esquimaux, he asks us to think of the poor children “born to blubber.”
Hood was not fond of riding —
There’s something in a horse
That I can always honour but never could endorse.
Here is his reference to the Vestal Fire: —
Like that old fire that, quite beyond a doubt,
Was always in — for none have found it out.
And this couplet about the birds is pretty as well as funny: —
All the little birds had laid their heads
Under their wings — sleeping on feather beds.
A very tall fool he describes as —
A column of fop.
A lighthouse without any light atop.
Sometimes his wit took a military direction. Here is an army on the march &8212;
So many marching men
That soon might be March dust.
And here was a detachment of volunteers not over-wiling to exert themselves to clear the way —
The pioneers seemed very loth
To axe their way to glory.
In Hood’s time, “Answers to Correspondents” had not become so vast a business as it is in some of our papers now, but even the omniscient, mysterious, and anonymous beings who provide these answers might take a hint from the kind of answers Hood sometimes gave, especially in declining proffered contributions — answers that helped, let us hope, to soothe the feelings of the disappointed correspondents. Here are some of them: —
“The Echoes” we fear will not answer.
“Alien” is foreign to his subject.
“Tears of sensibility” had better be dropped.
“The Night Thoughts” are worth reading, but the author is young.
“Y. Y.” — A word to the Y’s is sufficient.
26The essay on Agricultural Distress would increase it.
The essay on the Funeral Ceremonies of Ancient Nations will not do. It should be written in the dead languages.
“The Captive” is ready to be restored.
It was difficult for him to deal even with the gravest subjects without being betrayed into an occasional pun —
’Tis horrible to die,
And come down with our little all of dust.
The decay of nature in autumn he describes as “the book of nature getting short of leaves.”
His old schoolmaster says when dying, “I am dying fast; I am going from the terrestrial globe to the celestial.”
Who has not cried with poor Benbow over the faithlessness of his sweetheart when he comes home and finds her married to another.
O Sally Brown! O Sally Brown!
How could you serve me so?
I’ve met with many a breeze before,
But never such a blow.
And he never got over that shock.
His death which happened in his berth,
At forty-odd befell;
They went and told the sexton,
And the sexton toll’d the bell.
“Faithless Sally Brown” attained extraordinary popularity. It was sung at all the theatres, and by the boys in the street
The kindred ballad of Ben Battle is a string of puns.
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs
So he laid down his arms.
Now, as they bore him off the field,
Said he, “Let others shoot,
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot!”
The army surgeons made him limbs,
Said he, “They’re only pegs;
But there’s as wooden Members quite,
As represent my legs!”
When Ben returned home with his wooden legs and his pay, his first thought was of his sweetheart.
But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off!
“O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat,
Should be more uniform!”
28
Said she, “I loved a soldier once,
For he was blythe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave!
“Before you had those timber toes
Your love I did allow,
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now.”
“O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches;
At duty’s call I left my legs
In Badajoz’s breaches!
“O false and fickle Nelly Gray!
I know why you refuse;
Tho’ I’ve no feet, another man,
Is standing in my shoes.
“I wish I ne’er had seen your face;
But now a long farewell;
You’ll be my death; alack, alas!
You will not be my Nell.”
Away he went, and round his neck
A rope he did entwine.
And for the second time in life
Enlisted in the line!
Hood’s legend of Miss Kilmansegg sparkles, here and there, with puns, some of them delightful. One or two must suffice. When she was born, heiress to countless thousands of pounds —
29Like other babies, at her birth she cried,
Which made a sensation far and wide,
Ay, for twenty miles around her;
For tho’ to the ear it was nothing more
Than an infant’s wail; it was really the roar
Of a fifty-thousand pounder.
Here is the photograph of old Kilmansegg —
He had rolled in money, like pigs in mud,
Till it seemed to have entered into his blood
By some occult projection;
And his cheeks, instead of a healthy hue
As yellow as any guinea grew,
Making the common phrase seem true
About a rich complexion.
Then there were the servants —
The gorgeous footmen standing by,
In coats to delight a miner’s eye
With seams of the precious metal.
The table, the furniture, the people were all glittering with gold —
Not to forget the saucy lad,
The Page, who looked so splendidly clad,
Like a page from the “Wealth of Nations.”
Here is one of the verses bearing on the question of what name should be given to the infant Kilmansegg: —
Tho’ Shakespeare asks us “What’s in a name?’
(As if cognomens were all the same),
There’s really very great scope in it.
. . . . . . . .
30
A name? — if the party had a voice,
What mortal would be a Bugg by choice,
As a Hogg, a Grubb, or a Chubb rejoice,
Or any such nauseous blazon?
Not to mention many a vulgar name
That would make a doorplate blush for shame,
If doorplates weren’t so brazen!
One of the funniest of Hood’s papers was one voluminous pun on the expression “Civil War.” The military operations were all described under terms of courtesy. In detailing the casualties, the commanding officer says, in the course of his report: — “The 10th was politely invited to a masked battery, and a succession of balls, kept up with a spirit that the regiment, and Major Smith in particular, will long remember. Colonel Bower is deeply indebted to a lancer, who helped him off his horse; and Captain Curtis is lying under a similar obligation in the hospital. Captain Flint owes the cure of his asthma to the skill of a carabineer; and Lieutenant Power was favoured with as specific a remedy for determination of blood to the head. Major Beake is absent, having received a pressing invitation, that he could not well resist, to visit the enemy’s quarters.”
People speak of the ruling passion being strong in death. It was so with Thomas Hood. He said when near his end, that he was dying out of charity to the undertaker, who wished “to urn a lively-Hood.”
31A paper on punning appeared in the Guardian, several years ago, from the pen of Mr Birch, who is pretty hard upon the practice. He would excuse a little of it in common conversation, but regards premeditated puns committed to the press as unpardonable crimes. “There is,” he says, “as much difference between these, and the unpremeditated pun of common discourse, as betwixt causal rencounters and murder with malice prepénse.
This dictum can hardly be allowed to pass unchallenged. The truth is that, taking Tom Hood alone, some of his famous puns could be quoted, any one of which would be more missed in literature than Mr Birch’s whole essay. Good puns are as legitimate in print as in talk, and reach, and give the same enjoyment to, thousands of people, for every single one who could hear and enjoy them in talk from the punster’s lips.
Many are the uses of the pun. How often it gives point to repartee, disarms opposition, and serves the punster’s purpose better than argument or expostulation.
Charles Burleigh, the abolitionist, in the midst of an anti-slavery speech, was struck full in the face by a rotten egg. “There’s a proof,” he said, as he calmly wiped his face with his handkerchief — “A proof of what I have always maintained — that pro-slavery arguments are very unsound.” 32 The crowd laughed heartily, and Burleigh was allowed to speak without further molestation. So true is it that a witty as well as a soft answer will sometimes turn away wrath.
Two young fellows seeing a bishop coming along the street, thought to poke a little irreverent fun at him.
“Please, sir,” said one of them, stopping suddenly as they were passing, “can you tell us the — way to heaven?” “Yes, said the Bishop, cheerfully, “first turn to the Right, and hold straight on.”
“This river of yours seems to me a sickly stream,” said a grumbling tourist. “Yes,” said the native, “it’s always confined to its bed.”
In 1635, when Richardson was on the Western circuit, he had a sharp stone flung at his head by a condemned criminal while he was leaning upon his elbow. His hat was knocked off, but owing to his bent position, he escaped without personal injury. “You see,” he said to his friends, who were earnestly congratulating him on his escape, “if I had been an upright judge, then had I been slain.” It relieved their feelings, and filled them with admiration at Richardson’s self-possession and good nature.
When Dr Ritchie, of Edinburgh, was speaking on one occasion in the U. P. Synod, he was annoyed by the Rev. Mr B——, a man with a conspicuously 33 turned-up nose, who, sitting in full view with his head thrust over the front of the gallery, was constantly interrupting the speaker with cries of “No, no.”
“Moderator,” said Dr Ritchie, pausing and turning his own eyes, and therefore the eyes of the Synod, round on the offender, “am I to be put down by Mr B——’s noes?“
There was an irrepressible roar of laughter, and the nose disappeared.
But Horne Tooke must have been more of a wit than a courtier if it be true that when George III. asked him if he played cards, he replied, “I cannot, your Majesty, tell a king from a knave.”
Archbishop Whateley was both a wag and a wit. When the new Bishop of Cork was dining with him, Whateley said, “Come, though you are John Cork, you mustn’t stop the bottle here.” The Bishop’s reply was equally clever — “I see your lordship is determined to draw me out.”
Once, when examining a very young clergyman, who showed considerable nervousness, Whateley asked him to state the difference between a form and a ceremony. The meaning seemed nearly the same, but there was a very nice distinction. The young clergyman offered one or two replies. “No,” said Whateley, with a twinkle in his eye; “it lies in this: you sit upon a form, but you stand 34 upon ceremony.” It provoked a laugh, and the young clergyman was at once put at his ease.
A pun sometimes provides a happy way of putting a thing; as when a gentleman, on receiving a present of a brace of woodcocks, acknowledged the gift in the following lines: —
My thanks I’ll no longer delay
For birds which you’ve shot with such skill;
But though there was nothing to pay,
Yet each of them brought in a bill!
The following note was sent by the famous Dr Jenner, along with a couple of ducks, to the mother of a patient who was convalescent: —
I’ve despatched, my dear madam, this scrap of a letter,
To say that Miss Wilson is very much better;
A regular doctor no longer she lacks,
And therefore I’ve sent her a couple of quacks.
A good story is told about the late Bishop Wilberforce. When he was travelling eastwards to attend the Church Congress at Norwich, a lady sitting opposite to him commented in flattering terms on the eloquence and ability of the great Anglican divine, quite unconscious that she was addressing him. “But why, sir,” she added, “why do people call him Soapy Sam?” “Well, madam,” replied the bishop, “I suppose it is because he has often been in hot water, but has always managed to come out with clean hands.”
35The Duchess of Newcastle, who was a great writer of plays and romances in the time of Charles II., asked Bishop Wilkins, who had just announced his discovery of a world in the moon, how she could get there. “As the journey,” said she, “must needs be very long, there will be no possibility of getting there without stopping by the way.” “Your Grace,” replied the bishop, who had read some of her novels, “can be at no loss for places to stop at, you have built so many castles in the air.”
A stranger to law-courts, hearing a judge call a serjeant “brother,” expressed his surprise. “Oh,” said one present, “they are brothers, — brothers-in-law.”
A capital pun was once made by Lord Colonsay. An Aberdeen shoemaker who had become heir unexpectedly to a large sum of money, but who had afterwards fallen into misfortune, chiefly from “feminine causes,” sought to divorce his wife, while she also sought to divorce him. In the various suits some £3000 were spent. Lord Deas, during a dispute about the wife’s expenses, asked, “How would this shoemaker have got justice if he had been obliged to stick to his last?” The Lord President answered, “He would have required to spend his awl.”
Nothing is pleasanter — nothing indicates more self-control and good temper, than to see a 36 person who is put suddenly into an embarrassing position turn it off with a pleasant joke.
“Julius Cæsar” was on the boards when one of the actors, passing a grocer’s shop where an empty cask stood on the pavement, had his coat caught, by a projecting nail and torn. Looking ruefully at it, he exclaimed —
“See what a rent the envious cask has made!”
The late Dr Halley, of Dumbarton, told me that, at a social gathering connected with Dr Robertson of Irvine’s church, a very prosy speaker went on so long as not only to weary the audience but encroach upon the time when the fruit was to be served. The stewardesses accordingly came in and began to get the plates distributed. The operation was attended with a good deal of clattering noise, which was like to drown the monotonous voice of the speaker. At last Dr Robertson, who was in the chair, got up and exclaimed, with a voice like a trumpet, “Hush, hush! Mr O—— is a remarkable man. He is not like some other authors. He doesn’t like to have his works illustrated with plates.” Mr O—— was himself so tickled with the pun that he laughed, and, after looking at he clock, sat down amidst tumultuous expressions of joyful relief.
Sometimes a broad hint tricked out as a pun can 37 be sent home with less offence than if given in its naked severity.
Samuel Johnson, referring to the practice of borrowing books and not returning them, remarked that though some of his friends were poor hands at keeping accounts, they were first-rate book-keepers.
It was somebody who had to groan over similar experiences who wrote —
How hard that those who do not wish
To lose (called “lend”) their books
Are snared by anglers — folks that fish
With literary hooks.
I, of my Spenser quite bereft,
Last winter, sore was shaken;
Of Lamb I’ve but a quarter left,
Nor could I save my Bacon.
My Mallet served to knock me down,
Which makes me thus a talker;
And once, when I was out of town,
My Johnson proved a Walker.
They still have made me slight returns,
And thus my griefs divide;
For oh! they’ve cured me of my Burns,
And eased my Akenside.
But all I think I shall not say,
Nor let my anger burn;
For as they never found me Gay,
They never left me Sterne.
Some fair fingers get little rest; but perhaps in the following case the husband’s joke would 38 win a favourable response. It was an old saw new set.
“Come, wife,” said Will, “I pray you devote
Just half a minute to mend this coat,
Which a nail has chanced to rend.”
“’Tis ten o’clock,” said his drowsy mate.
“I know,” said Will, “it is rather late,
But it’s never too late to mend!”
When a wag heard a boy reading something about the “patriarchs” — a word which the boy uniformly pronounced “partridges” — the wag observed that “the boy was surely making game of the patriarchs.”
Douglas Jerrold was a noted punster. On one occasion, he was raising money for some brother of the quill who had fallen into poor circumstances. A friend suggested a mutual acquaintance, who, he said, would be sure to help. “I have written him,” said Jerrold, “but got nothing.” “Strange,” said the other; “he’s a man full of kindness.” “Yes,” said Jerrold, “un-remitting kindness!”
A gentleman at the dinner-table, pausing with the knife and fork in his hand, and contemplating the loin of mutton before him, said, “Shall I cut this saddle-wise?” “No, no,” said one of the hungry guests, “cut it bridlewise. We want to get a bit in our mouths!”
A wit at Court was asked by the king to produce 39 a pun. “Will your Majesty, then, suggest a subject?” “Make one on myself,” said the king. “But,’ replied the wit, “Your Majesty is not a subject.”
Not less happy was Sydney Smith’s rejoinder to the young lady who remarked, when they were going through the garden, that “she feared she would never be able to bring that pea to perfection.” “Permit me then,” said he, taking her by the hand, “to bring perfection to the pea!”
Foote was another punster: — “Why are you for ever humming that air?” he asked of a friend who had no sense of tune in him. “Because,” replied the other, “it haunts me.” “No wonder it haunts you,” said Foote, “you have murdered it so often.”
Much bored by a pompous physician at Bath, who confided to him as a great secret that he had a mind to publish his own poems, but had so many irons in the fire that he really did not well know what to do, Foote † said, “Take my advice, doctor, and put your poems where your other irons are.”
Dining, when in Paris, with Lord Stormont, that thrifty Scotch peer, who at that time was ambassador, produced his wine, as usual, in the smallest of decanters, and dispensed it in the minutest of glasses, enlarging all the time on its exquisite quality and its great age. “It is very 40 small of its age,” said Foote, holding his diminutive glass up to look at it.
The pun is sometimes ingeniously used to turn aside a too direct inquiry, to evade a broad hint, or extricate oneself from a dilemma.
A waggish bishop was asked by a solemn young clergyman whether any schism was to be looked upon as pardonable. “Yes,” replied the bishop, “a witticism.”
Two shoemakers, travelling together, were asked by a gentleman at the table d’hôte as to their occupations. “I practise the heeling art,” said one. “And I,” said the other, “labour for the good of men’s soles.”
When Mrs Gadaway suggested to her husband that she would be the better of a little change, he replied cheerfully that he would give her two-and-sixpence for half-a-crown.
Sheridan, the spendthrift and wit, was dunned by a tailor who urged that he should at least pay the interest on his bill. Sheridan replied that it was neither his principle to pay the interest, nor his interest to pay the principal.
A contributor called at a newspaper office, and getting hold of one of the compositors, began to remonstrate with him about a poem of his which had not been properly punctuated. “But,” said the typo, “I’m not a pointer; I’m a setter.”
“No smoking allowed here!” roared a steamboat 41 captain to one of his passengers, an Irishman, who — aft of the gangway — was puffing away at a long nine; “no smoking allowed!” “Shure now,” said Pat, “I’m not smoking aloud!” When the captain insisted on Pat putting out his pipe, or moving forward, he would no doubt, after that, do it in a pleasanter way.
It is doubtful, however, if the fellow who, when convicted of picking a man’s pocket, excused himself on the ground that he had done it in a fit of abstraction, would find his plea do much to help him.
But often, when an unpleasant thing has to be referred to, a joke will help it pleasantly past. When Peel’s brother-in-law came back unsuccessful from his election contest at Devonport, Peel said, “Well, George, you are back, but not returned!”
A bumptious aspirant to literary honours wrote a friend to ask what magazine would give him the highest position soonest. His friend suggested a powder magazine, and thought that one fiery article should suffice.
An Edinburgh punster was asked by an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas Carlyle’s works if he did not enjoy “expatiating in the same field?” “No,” replied the wit; “I can’t get over the style.”
A brilliant wit, whose brother — less scholarly 42 but preternaturally grave in his appearance — had got a degree from his University, declared that he and his brother were contradictions of the law of nature, for his brother had risen by his gravity, while he had sunk by his levity.
Sometimes the pun pokes more than fun at people. Here is one of Charles Lever’s about matrimony: —
Though matches are all made in heaven they say,
Yet Hymen who mischief oft hatches,
Sometimes deals with the house t’other side of the way,
And there make lucifer matches.
A kindred joke was once made at table, when a question arose about the origin of the custom of casting an old shoe after a newly married pair. One gentleman suggested that it was intended to indicate that their chances of happiness were slippery.
Here is another, also with a sting in it, from a disappointed churchgoer: —
To the church I once went,
But I grieved and I sorrow’d;
For the season was Lent,
And the sermon was borrow’d.
When a critic of the time attacked Garrick’s pronunciation and accused him of pronouncing the i in “mirth” and “birth” as if it were u, the great actor wrote the following: —
43If ’tis true, as you say, that I’ve injured a letter,
I’ll change my note soon, and I hope for the better,
May the just rights of letters, as well as of men,
Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen.
Most devoutly I wish that they both have their due,
and that “I” may be never mistaken for “U.”
Keen also was the reply made to the man who said angrily to an opponent, “Take care, sir, or I’ll give you a piece of my mind.” “Pray don’t,” said the other blandly, “I’ve got enough of my own, and you have none to spare.” This was retort of the stinging kind.
No wit of the time equalled Douglas Jerrold in this kind of wit. Take two or three illustrations.
When a friend, speaking to Jerrold about an intolerable bore of their acquaintance, asked him if he had read his “Descent into Purgatory?” “His Descent into Purgatory!” said Jerrold; “no; but I should like to see it.”
A dissipated litterateur applying to Jerrold for money, said, “You know, Jerrold, we both row in the same boat.” “Ay,” said Jerrold, “but, thank God, with different sculls.”
Lord Nugent, a friend of Jerrold’s, did not hesitate, when he got the chance, to repeat jokes of Jerrold’s as if they were his own. At a theatrical party held at Sir Edward Bulwer’s, someone speaking of Lord Nugent said, “He’s 44 a fine, honest fellow is Nugent.” “Yes,” said Jerrold, “you might trust him with untold jokes!”
Jerrold aptly described dogmatism as puppyism come to maturity.
A pun may sometimes come by suggestion, instead of expression. When a loud-voiced and voluble man was boring a company (where Jerrold was present) with his rudimentary views about music and songs, and at last exclaimed with regard to one particular song, “Ah, that’s a song! Now, when I hear that song sung, it — it carries me away!” “Could anyone oblige us by singing that song?” said Jerrold, looking anxiously round the company.
Here is a two-edged pun, from Sydney Smith about fashionable men and women: —
Thoughtless that “all that’s brightest fades,”
Unmindful of that knave of spades,
The sexton, and his subs;
How foolishly we play our parts!
Our wives on diamonds set their hearts,
We set our hearts on clubs.
The author of the following had some knowledge of human nature. He said he had discovered the respective natures of a distinction and a difference. A little difference, he said, often makes enemies; but a little distinction secures friends.
45The following verses brought out both a distinction and a difference: —
A counsel once, of talent vain,
A Quaker rudely treated,
Who often, in his story plain,
The word “also” repeated.
“Also!” said Brief, with sneering wit;
“Won’t ‘likewise’ do as well?”
“No, friend; but, if thou wilt permit,
Their difference I will tell.
“Scarlett’s a counsel learn’d, we know,
Whose talents oft surprise;
Thou art a counsel, friend, also
But surely not like-wise.”
Some church office-bearers, on collection days, will appreciate the point of Mr Guthrie of Brechin’s remark that “some people give according to their means, others according to their meanness.”
Sometimes puns are perpetrated unintentionally. Alexander Gunn, an excise officer, being dismissed for misconduct, the entry in the books appeared as follows: — “A. Gun discharged for making a false report.”
That was surely a grim unconscious pun on the part of the undertaker, who, having apartments to let, propped the card in the window below against the end of a coffin: — “Lodgings for single gentlemen.”
It was another unconscious pun that was perpetrated 46 by the reporter, who, after describing an accident that had befallen an elocutonist on his way to a mixed entertainment, added that he had nevertheless been able to appear in three pieces.
One religious writer speaks of a death-bed as a “frightful tester.” In “Macbeth” we read —
I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
That it may seem their guilt.
Thomas Hood puns so often, even in his serious pieces, that it is difficult to say whether this one was or was not intended —
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show me their sunny back,
And twit me with the spring.
If some people pun unintentionally, there are, at the other extreme, some who, even when they hear a pun, are so unconscious of its point that it generally comes to a tragic end if they ever attempt to reproduce it.
A man who heard a witty fellow say, that though walking with his friend’s arm he had fallen “not-with-standing,” went away and reported him as saying that he had “fallen nevertheless.”
At an ordination dinner a careless waiter stumbled when bringing in a boiled tongue. The tongue slipped over the edge of the dish upon the tablecloth. “Never mind,” said the chairman 47 cheerfully, “it’s only a lapsus linguæ“ (slip of the tongue). The joke was received with a burst of laughter. A gentleman present, who had no knowledge of Latin, and, therefore, did not see the point of the joke, yet saw what boisterous merriment it caused, secretly determined that he would repeat the whole performance at his next little dinner party at home, and give his guests a great laugh at his wit. The occasion arrived. There was to be a leg of mutton, and the host had secretly instructed the butler to let it fall when coming in. The butler did so, to the consternation of the company. “Oh, never mind,” cried the host cheerfully, “it’s only a lapsus linguæ!” To his astonishment and chagrin, nobody seemed to see it!
At a church meeting a solemn-looking deacon submitted a report, in writing, of the destitute widows and others who stood in need of assistance. “Are you sure, brother,” said the pastor, looking over the list, “are you sure that you have embraced all the widows?” The deacon said, “Yes; he believed he had.”
Neither pastor nor deacon seemed to understand what the people began to chuckle about.
I remember hearing of a plantation preacher who warned his hearers with great earnestness against what he called their “upsettin’ sins.”
A brother preacher, who was one of the 47 audience, said to him afterwards, “You aint got de hang of dat ’ar word. It aint upsettin’ sins; its besettin’ sins.”
“Brudder,” replied the preacher, “I was a thinkin’ of drunkenness, and if drunkenness aint a upsettin’ sin, I dunno what am.”
That darky deserved double credit for his joke. He not only made a good pun, but a pun that covered his own blunder and turned it into a happily expressed truth.
Even where puns serve no other purpose, it is something to say for them, as for other forms of wit, that they give innocent enjoyment, that they break the monotony of graver conversation, throw sun-glints on all kinds of subjects, and find material for amusement where least expected.
If it is pleasant to find books in the running brooks and sermons in stones, it is not less pleasant and sometimes not less profitable to find food for merriment in what seems commonplace, prosaic, and even depressing. A clever and good-natured pun, in such a case, is like a little flower in the desert.
Elf.Ed. Notes
The author uses some material by celebrated funnymen from the previous hundred years or so. Several can be find in Mark Lemon’s Jest Book, which is online here, in a unauthorized and uncredited American copy, called Joe Miller's Jest Book. I have linked their names with either the joke Macrae is referring to, or to other samples of their humor.
* There happen to be two “blunders” of the typographical variety in this text, which have been corrected. Also, there are what appears to be typographical mistakes to us today, but are not. The absence of a period after “Mr” instead of “Mr.”, and “Dr” instead of “Dr.”, was normal and accepted usage in those days. This is very common in Italian texts still, according to Bill Thayer, who surely knows. It also occurs in older French texts. The other accepted pseudo-blunder found here is the typographical format of leaving a space before some contractions, e.g. ’ll and the use of an apostrophe, e. g., “M‘Dougall”, instead of a superscript, or small “c” for Scottish names beginning with “Mc.”
† This joke has also been attributed to Samuel Johnson, who lived and punned in the period before Foote, the actor. He certainly could have "borrowed it," though.
Samuel Johnson.