Help: Is jokelore Folklore?

Subject: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Luke
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 07:17 AM

Click for the 'PermaThread™: List of all joke threads'

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There are many threads here that are in many ways humorous, I have in fact been guilty of placeing jokelorish threads and lately have come under some amount of fire for same. I have always placed jokelore in the same rather honored place as folklore. What do you say?

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 07:24 AM

Well most of my jokes are older than most of my song "repertoire" if that's what you mean!
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Deckman
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 07:34 AM

Vance Randolf, the famous Ozarks folklorist, considered them folklore. As he collected songs, he also collected the humor. In 1956, he published his first collection of mountain humor called, "Pissing In The Snow." He had to have it published privatly at the time because of censorship restrictions ... much of the humor was considered to bawdy. It's a great book, llok in the used book stores. Bob(deckman) Nelson

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: jeffp
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 08:15 AM

Jokes reflect the popular culture. As such, the ones that last become part of folklore, just as songs that last do. IMHO

jeffp

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 08:33 AM

And like with song the good ones last longest, or as someone else said, the old ones are the best!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 09:09 AM

Are we headed for a new variation of the traditional what-is-folk thread - "What is a folk-joke?..."

Packie Manus Byrne distinguishes between people who tell stories, people who tell jokes, and people who tell lies. "I'm a liar" he'd say.

Sometimes when you hear a joke, you're busy trying to think of another to tell back. But with the ones that matter, you're thinking how you're going to tell that one somewhere else, and does it need any adjustment.

Good jokes are like good songs, you want to hear them again, and hear them done well (not too often though). They get better as they mature - like whiskey, rather than eggs that have to be passed on before they go off..

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 09:15 AM

Yes!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: BobP
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:04 AM

Luke,

Trust me on this.

If you want to recieve a complete "Folklore Humor" education, study Art Thieme.

That's pretty much the course.

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 11:38 AM

I used to revel in light bulb jokes. I would tell one to allow me to prepare the folk club or me or both. After 6 months of "not another one please" I finally revealed that what I was doing was demonstrating a genre that is passed on by word of mouth and has no author and changes with the telling and lives in the culture. It is regarded as throw away and worthless by its perpetuators. Just like that first song Cecil Sharp collected.
In short I was doing "folk" in a folk club and they didn't suss me!
They thought I was after cheap laughs, AS IF!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 11:46 AM

Yes, of course, jokes are another form of folklore - and so are limericks, slang, jump-rope rhymes, rules of games, urban legends, herbal remedies, recipes, designs of various artifacts and methods of making them, vernacular architecture - and probably you can add to the list. Folklore is whatever knowledge or information meets the criteria that (1) nobody knows exactly who originated it, (2) it gets deliberately passed from person to person, and gets modified as it goes, and (3) it exists in more than one version. (Any of these rules is arguable, of course, but that's the way I see it.)

Since "Pissing in the Snow" has been mentioned. I'd like to recommend a couple of other books:

"Rationale Of The Dirty Joke; An Analysis of Sexual Humor," by G. Legman, 1968.

"No Laughing Matter: An Analysis of Sexual Humor" by G. Legman, 1982.

Legman gets a little heavily into the psychoanalytic interpretation of jokes, but if you want, you can easily skip the interpretation and just read the jokes.

I once read an interesting article in Verbatim - The Language Quarterly, in which the author - a bartender with literary inclinations - treated names and recipes for mixed drinks as a form of folklore. He listed a lot of names of drinks whose names are sexually suggestive (Sloe Screw, Slippery Nipple, etc.) and described how young people are always looking for the mythical drink that will get them drunk without making them sick, causing a hangover, or tasting like alcohol!

Of course, not all folklore is sexual, but sexual stuff is more often folkloric because it has (until recently) been kept out of the mainstream media.

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Hawker
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 04:17 PM

Yep, infact think of traditional songs that have jokes within them - The barring of the door, for example, Rawtenstall Annual Fair, Just musical yarns
Lucy

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 04:14 PM

A bit of insight into the "folk process" wrapped up as a lightbulb joke.
Q How many lightbulb jokes does it take to change a lightbulb joke?"
A about ten
That's the folk process. So it must be folk! IMHO

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 04:36 PM

Knock! Knock!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 04:38 PM

"like whiskey, rather than eggs"

:-)

That's a pretty good line there....

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 06:19 PM

One leg is both the same, too! And one side easy up and sunny side over.

And besides, I never heard no horse tell a joke! :>)

A

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Bert
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 06:51 PM

DtG, ...the old ones are the best... You must have been talking to Skiff!!!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 07:43 PM

I've been wondering how copyright works in relation to jokes. I mean, could you suddenly find that there's an injunction against telling certain jokes because they aren't seen to be in public domain.

Where do they draw the lines between someone ripping-off a comedian's act wholesale, and someone retelling a joke they heard, maybe in the course of that comedian's act, maybe in the bar at the interval.

Is there a DT of jokes anyhere?

(And the same kind of questions arise around stories...)

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 08:06 PM

I have a patent pending on linguistic forms designed to invoke a state of pleasure, laughter, smiles, or brickbats in homo sapiens through the use of narrative devices concerning the distaff offspring of agrarian owner-workers in combination with mercantile agencies, representatives or legatees of whatsoever description... so if you know any of them old jokes, get out your checkbook!

A

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Fergie
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 09:19 PM

wydat12

WHO'S THERE?

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 10:10 PM

wdy

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Sorcha
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 10:52 PM

Why is Who There?

(yes, to the question. Heard many "elephant" jokes lately? I doubt it, they are all Blonde Jokes. No Polack jokes around either)

Hoo dat say "hoo dat" when I say "hoo dat"..........

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 11:23 PM

Knock! Knock!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 10:59 PM

Who's there?

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 01:22 PM

Sam & Janet

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 01:23 PM

Sam & Janet Who?

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 01:32 PM

Knock! Knock!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 02:16 PM

evening...

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:17 PM

A good friend told me this old joke just doesn't work anymore. I should have believed him.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:24 PM

Orange juice sorry you made me cry?

HYAAAAAH COMMMMME DE JUUUUDDDGE!!....

No, "Who"'s on second.

A

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 04:46 PM

'Pissing in the Snow' is a widely available paperback.

I think they're different, because there's some clean folklore (not that it's much read).

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 02:57 AM

Knock! Knock!

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 04:03 AM

OK, wdyat12, who's there?

There is an anthro professor at U.C. Berkeley, Allen Dundes, who is a scholar of jokes - he's been head of the folklore program, and, I think, the anthropology department. I can remember first reading him when I was looking through a scholarly folklore journal, and came upon an article called "Polish Pope Jokes." I instantly forgot about which article I was originally looking for.

-chanteyranger

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:26 AM

McGrath of Harlow
thanks for the response
Just in case the intervening post confused people
(All together, in the key of C#----) Sam & Janeted evening
before someone does the Sam & Ella one. There was a greasey spoon cafe in Tipton, just down the road from "Mad O'Rourkes Pie Factory" and they traded under the name "Sam & Ella's"
I just hope their real name wasn't E. Coley.

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Luke
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:28 AM

The reason I brought the topic to a thread is because I was criticized for my thread about the amish virus. More specifically, because of the Amish members of Mudcat and their feelings. "Like telling a nigger joke in a blues bar" was the chide. In my estimation this is a blues bar, an Irish session, open mic, a comedy club and folklorists forum. And jokelore has a place here. There are so many people coming from so many places with so much to say. I was never expecting to be warned about such trifles. Not long ago there was a thread about whether we should censor our topics here because of the number of children coming to the site. It was fairly easy to see that most folks wished the youngsters well but thought that if they had the good sense to be here then they should be regarded as members of the family and left to their own judgement. I feel that way. However, I personally will never enter another humerous topic here lest some Polly Anna gets her little frills ruffled.

Luke

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:36 AM

Noah: "Knock Knock"
Mrs Noah:"Who's there."
Noah: "Little old lady"
Mrs Noah: "Little old lady who?"
Noah:"I didn't know you could yodel"

Ham, Shem and Japhet, leaping overboard in disgust:"Dad, that one's out of the ark, even Roger the Skiffler wouldn't use that old gag."
RtS (who has no shame!)

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 11:32 AM

Musical joke coming up.

Hello, this is good King Wenceslas. Can I order a pizza please?

Certain Sir. As it's the feast of Stephen we are offering a special.

Deep pan, crisp and even.....

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: wdyat12
Date: 03 Apr 01 - 02:21 AM

wdy

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 11 - 03:26 PM

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar.

The bartender says, "What is this? Some kind of joke!?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 11 - 03:28 PM

A dog walks into a bar and hops up onto a bar stool. He says to the bartender, "Gimme a Harvey Wallbanger."

The bartender makes him the drink. The dog picks the glass up in his forepaws and drinks it down. Then, he gets up onto the bar, jumps over to the shelf under the big mirror, walks up the mirror, across the ceiling, down the wall, and out the door.

A man sitting at the bar and watching all this with amazement says to the bartender, "Man, that is pretty unusual!"

"Yeah, it is," says the bartender. "He usually orders a Martini."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: Is jokelore Folklore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 01:18 PM

What is the game that Homer Simpson really hates to lose?

Tic Tac DOH!

Don Firth