Expanding from the thread title, I became aware of this incident from the Horrible Histories series by Terry Deary (I believe I had some relatives who were living in the UK that gave me those books as presents). The back cover of The Measly Middle-Ages advertised in rather bold, attention-getting letters that it contained a historically authentic jesters joke. And as a pretty miserable and nerdy kid, I needed all the laughs I could get. So needless to say this was something I was maybe overly excited about. But read the book I did, and learned many interesting things. "Whoa, knights weren't noble, chivalrous do-gooders but vicious, lunk-headed brutes?" "Wow, they sure liked to use things like dog piss in their medicine, no wonder why everything was so fucked up then."
The jester's joke was inspired by the need to inform the king of the destruction of the French fleet in, well, you saw the thread title. If normal folks were too scared to deliver bad or stark news to the king, it might fall to the jester to deliver them, and destroying the fleet was, unsurprisingly, bad news. The book described the setup and punchline as follows:
Jester: "Oh, those cowardly English."
Someone at the court, possible the king: "Hm? How are they cowardly?"
Jester: "Well, you see, they don't have the bravery to jump into the sea like our brave French soldiers."
While I thought less of the joke at the time than people cracking up on the set of movies (loved me that bloopers tv show hosted by dick clark as a kid), one thing was for sure: it stuck with me, and soon became, to my mind, the perfect joke structure. Ever since then I've been trying to chase that high on my own. Whether I've succeeded is anybody's guess.
Happy weekend, Era!
The jester's joke was inspired by the need to inform the king of the destruction of the French fleet in, well, you saw the thread title. If normal folks were too scared to deliver bad or stark news to the king, it might fall to the jester to deliver them, and destroying the fleet was, unsurprisingly, bad news. The book described the setup and punchline as follows:
Jester: "Oh, those cowardly English."
Someone at the court, possible the king: "Hm? How are they cowardly?"
Jester: "Well, you see, they don't have the bravery to jump into the sea like our brave French soldiers."
While I thought less of the joke at the time than people cracking up on the set of movies (loved me that bloopers tv show hosted by dick clark as a kid), one thing was for sure: it stuck with me, and soon became, to my mind, the perfect joke structure. Ever since then I've been trying to chase that high on my own. Whether I've succeeded is anybody's guess.
Happy weekend, Era!
