A Joke Whose Humor is Lost in Time?
King Martin I’s jester explained his tardiness by stating that he had been: “in the next vineyard, your majesty, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if somebody had punished him for stealing figs“. Something about that joke and the image it evoked struck the monarch as extremely funny. Apparently, while some jokes are timeless and universal, many more are time and culture sensitive. It seems that in fifteenth century Aragon, deer hanged by the tail as punishment for the theft of figs were deemed to be super funny.
So funny, in Martin’s case, that he laughed uncontrollably for three hours at the joke, until he finally fell out of the bed and hit the floor, stone dead. Because Martin had failed to secure the succession to an illegitimate son, he became the last ruler of the Aragonite House of Barcelona (878 – 1410). He was succeeded by a nephew, Ferdinand I of Aragon. Martin however had gone out laughing. That is not a bad end for a royal life or dynasty, especially in light of the typically nasty alternatives whereby royal dynasties and noble lineages often came to an end throughout history.