The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118593   Message #2590780
Posted By: Gervase
17-Mar-09 - 03:50 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Gallows Humour-laughing at death/disease
Subject: RE: Folklore: Gallows Humour-laughing at death/dis
Sick?
If you look back over his contributions to a lot of threads, he is genuinely interested in the folklore of the macabre, and has a lot to offer on the subject.
To dismiss him with a veiled 'fuck off' is the equivalent of the Victorian habit of pretending that sex and prostitution didn't exist and censuring those who dared mention it. You can't just put your fingers in your ears and go 'la la la' and expect something will go away.
I think the first macabre joke I heard was when the heiress Lesley Whittle was kidnapped and murdered back in the Seventies; along the lines of "What's green and hangs down drains."
Of course it goes back further than that. Heard the phrase "Sweet Fanny Adams"? That was a sailor's joke about their tinned beef, referring to a young girl who was murdered and butchered in the 19th century. And I'm sure there are plenty of earlier examples.
Had the internet existed in Victorian times, there would doubtless have been people furiously posting their protests at the horrible disrespect shown to Fanny's family by those horrible brutes who dared mock her grisly end!