The Handbook of Conundrums Part 1

The Handbook of Conundrums.

by Edith B. Ordway.

PREFACE

This book presents a grindstone whereon the reader may whet his wits.

It is of sufficient hardness to resist the coa.r.s.est metal of broad-bladed humor, and of sufficient fineness of grain to edge the best steel of fancy.

Like all grindstones, though its form is new, its ingredients are of remote origin. It has whetted many English and American blades for the battle of ideas, and is, therefore, in places, somewhat worn.

There is, however, much absolutely fresh surface.

Any blade of fine temper properly ground upon it is warranted to cleave to the dividing asunder of such subtle distinctions as that between humorsome stupidity and precise wit, and that between the wit of laughter only and the wit of insight.

E. B. O.

INTRODUCTION

A conundrum is a riddle in the form of a question, the answer to which involves a pun. Originally the term was applied to any quaint expression. It is thus, in its modern form, a union of the elaborated riddle and the impromptu pun.

With the earliest development of intelligence came the discovery of likeness and difference in things, and the search for a.n.a.logy was carried out along both sensible and absurd lines, the latter drifting into a double a.n.a.logy of thought and form, of which the conundrum is the logical product.

The literatures of all peoples contain the riddle, which might be witty or serious as impulse prompted. All bright and clever minds have seen the possibilities of the pun, and so common is it as an impromptu form of wit among keen people, so general the temptation to fall into it, that it is looked upon with disfavor, as a pitfall for thought, which often prevents it from finishing its course.

The conundrum has, however, an ancient and honorable lineage, and, while not often given its precise form in conversation or anecdote, is readily adapted to the permanent embodiment of those flashes of wit which enlighten and cheer.

The ability to guess and to propound riddles was held in high respect in early times. Men of great physical prowess were expected to guess riddles to prove their mental prowess, and many were the contests of this sort which were held. The stakes in these contests were very high,--often life or honor. In Norse mythology the prize of such a contest was once the daughter of the G.o.d Thor; in another the life of the giant Vafthrudnir was forfeit when he failed to win in compet.i.tion with the G.o.d Odin.

So in the old English ballad of the Elfin-knight, a maiden saves herself from an evil spirit by successfully guessing his riddles.

Among many primitive peoples the game of riddle-reading was played with opposing sides, each headed by a champion, and with bets staked on the outcome. Often in ballads and folklore the hero's escape from death and final triumph hinge upon the guessing of a riddle.

The Semitic people held in high regard the power to read riddles, and this power, as in the story of Solomon, blends with the higher intelligence which makes for wisdom.

Perhaps the most famous of Hebrew conundrums is that of Samson, the strong of intellect as of body, who, when he found the honey which the wild bees had placed in the carca.s.s of a lion, read to the Philistines this riddle: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."

Among the Greeks and Romans, as among earlier peoples, all forms of wit and play of word and fancy were tried and popular. D'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," records that "It is certain that Cicero was an inveterate punster; and he seems to have been more ready with them than with repartees."

The story of the famous riddle of the Sphinx comes down from Greek mythology. The city of Thebes was infested by a monster having the body of a lion and the upper part of a woman. She lay crouching upon a rock near a narrow pa.s.s which led to the city, and propounded to all travelers a riddle, allowing all who guessed to pa.s.s safely, but killing all who failed. The uniform failure of all who came, and their subsequent slaughter, made great lamentation in the city.

Oedipus, the unacknowledged son of the King of Thebes, who had shortly before unknowingly killed his father, undertook to rid the city of the monster. He boldly confronted the Sphinx, who asked him the riddle, "What animal is it that in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?" Oedipus replied, "Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and knees, in manhood walks erect, and in old age goes with the aid of a staff."[1] The Sphinx thereupon cast herself from the rock and perished, and the Thebans made Oedipus king.

[1] See Gayley's "Cla.s.sic Myths in English Literature and in Art"

(Boston, Ginn and Company, 1911).

There is one age-old riddle, still current in Brittany, Germany, and Gascony, about which the tradition hovers that Homer died with vexation at not being able to discover the answer. It is, "What we caught we threw away, what we could not catch we kept."

Early folklore riddles dealt with natural phenomena. With the Wolofs the riddle of the wind asks, "What flies forever and rests never?"

The Teutonic form was, "What can go in the face of the sun, yet leave no shadow?" The Basutos of South Africa ask: "What is wingless and legless, yet flies fast and cannot be imprisoned?" and answer, "The voice."

The oldest English riddles extant are among the fragments found in "The Exeter Book." These date back to the eighth century and were written in Northumbria. While these are not conundrums in the modern sense, they are very elaborate studies of a.n.a.logy, and contain some of the most imaginative of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

In the early half of the seventeenth century there were published several small books, which contain the sources of many of the conundrums of the present day. These books have been brought together by W. Carew Hazlitt, under the t.i.tle "Shakespeare's Jest-Books"

(London, 1864). The dates of these books are variously 1600, 1630, 1636, and 1639. The form is narrative, with occasional dialogue, and approaches that of the conundrum, and the wit though far from subtle is often effective. Though the names of the authors of some of these books are known, the authorship of others is in doubt. They were to a considerable extent not attributable to one man, but were the bright sayings of the day.

The first chapter of the present volume, ent.i.tled "Early English Wit," brings together, in modernized form, some of the brightest of these sayings. The strangest thing about such a collection is to discover of what antiquity some current conundrums are. That is notably true of one taken from "Demaundes Joyous," printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1511, namely:

"_Demaund._ How many straws go to a goose's nest?

"_A._ None, for lack of feet.

Besides the puns which may be made within a language itself, through the variety of meanings of words and the similarity of sound in different words, there is a certain cla.s.s of hybrid puns and conundrums which is made by the interchange of languages. The following story ill.u.s.trates this cla.s.s: A newly appointed and bashful young curate was visiting a young ladies' school in his parish. The ordeal of facing so many blooming young misses was endured until, the cla.s.s in Virgil having been found ill-prepared and the teacher having requested that the translation be made word for word, he was startled by the declaration made by a pretty young lady, "We kiss him in turn"

(_Vicissim_, in turn), whereupon he ungallantly fled.

When Laud was Archbishop to Charles I, it is related that the Court Jester made the punning grace, "Great praise be to G.o.d and little Laud to the Devil," which resulted in his banishment by the Archbishop.

Shakespeare uses the conundrum with a masterly hand, ringing many changes upon it and producing many effects, both grave and gay. An example of the quizzical dialogue which has the wit of the conundrum as its basis, is found in "Twelfth Night," Act I., scene 5:

_Clown._ Good madonna, why mournest thou?

_Olivia._ Good fool, for my brother's death.

_Clown._ I think his soul is in h.e.l.l, madonna.

_Olivia._ I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

_Clown._ The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.

While the conundrum ranks as the formal literary representative of the spontaneous pun, the literature of wit is alive with the naked pun in its original state. Pope, Hood, Lamb, and Holmes are the names of some whose punning arraignments of puns and punsters make them at once judges and prisoners at the bar.

Theodore Hook is accredited with the original pun which is the basis of a common conundrum. He bragged that he could make a pun on any subject, and immediately a friend suggested that he make one on the King. "The King is no subject," was the prompt rejoinder.

The poems of Thomas Hood, the "king of punsters," abound in puns, and the sort of wit, subtle or broad, which may be expressed in puns. He was primarily a poet, and manipulated words in a masterly fashion, not letting them deflect his thought. An example of the inevitableness of his punning is found in the poem on "Sally Brown": "They went and told the s.e.xton, and the s.e.xton toll'd the bell."

A friendly contest between Hook and Hood, as to which could make the best pun, resulted in a draw, the efforts of the two men being of equal merit, according to the friend who was called upon to decide.

Alexander Pope, although disapproving of the pun as a trifling form of wit, once challenged his hearers to suggest a word upon which he could not make a pun. The word "keelhauling," meaning to draw a man under a ship, was given by a woman present. "That, Madam," replied Pope, "is indeed putting a man under a hardship."

The incident is told of Charles Lamb that once when in Salisbury Cathedral the constable remarked to him that eight people had dined at the top of the spire; whereupon Lamb remarked that they must be "very sharp set."

The story is told that a man noted for his wit in puns was asked in regard to the writings of Thomas Carlyle if he did not like "to expatiate in such a field?" He replied, "No. I can't get over the stile (style)."

From the riddle or pun it is but a short step to the conundrum, which takes the pun from its purely fact.i.tious setting and gives it a general application and a permanent form. It is, when rightly constructed, at once interesting and instructive, teaching as much by negative as by affirmative statement. It embodies the ever new a.n.a.logies between dissimilar things, and with a language so fertile in idiom as the English aids in its mastery. Used in application to historical and geographical subjects it may serve to fix names and places definitely in memory, as well as facts which but for the humorous interest given to them would be dry and easily forgotten.

There is a certain distinctive flavor to the current conundrums of a period which tells more of the popular interests of the time than anything but a newspaper could. The best conundrums of each period, or those that center around a great event, would make most illuminating historical reading. The opinions of the day are often more clearly expressed in a conundrum than in an essay. It would have been of interest to know what the wits, as well as the historians, said of Napoleon at Waterloo, of the Boston Tea Party, and of Washington and the Continental Congress. Possibly the opinion of posterity would not have differed so widely from that of the wits as from that of the contemporary chroniclers.