Aboriginal humour

Abstract

A life by flood and field is a hard one and Aboriginal life was very hard indeed. Unknowledgeable Europeans have thought it joyless, but this was far from being the case. The Aborigine's culture was materially simple, but it was adequate to his needs; his social organisation was exceedingly complex, but it allowed him a life of great satisfaction when not too much interrupted by Europeans; we are slowly discovering that he had arich aesthetic capacity and an interesting metaphysical conception of life and world; and I can testify from much acquaintance that he added to these a very marked sense of humour. He had, in short, fundamentally all that we have. At least he once had. He was fully equipped to meet life on even terms and, with humour, to get a little the better of it in passing. To understand and appreciate his humour is one of the best ways of rounding out an estimate of him as a human personality. Much of what I shall say amounts in the end to around about statement that the Aborigines found amusing much the same kind of things which we find amusing. In other words, we are dealing with human universals. It is therefore, perhaps, as well for me to begin by saying that there were of course major differences.