Chapter 4 - Sir Dinadan the Humorist

IT seemed to me that this quaint² lie was most simply and beautifully told; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.

Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently³ poor quality. He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy⁴ of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing⁵ after him and battering⁶ and crashing against everything that came in their way and making altogether a chaos⁷ of confusion and a most deafening⁸ din¹ and turmoil⁹; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy¹⁰. It was just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal¹¹ idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech -- of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities¹² -- but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the scoffer¹⁴ didn't laugh -- I mean the boy. No, he scoffed¹⁵; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff¹³ at. He said the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were petrified¹⁶. I said "petrified" was good; as I believed, myself, that the only right way to classify the majestic¹⁷ ages of some of those jokes was by geologic¹⁸ periods. But that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate the commonwealth¹⁹ up to it if I pulled through. It is no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet.

Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me for fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians²⁰, who all wore the same ridiculous garb²¹ that I did -- a garb that was a work of enchantment²², and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands. However he had nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights²³ in a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the wonder and admiration²⁴ of the king and the court. He spoke²⁵ of me all the time, in the blandest²⁶ way, as "this prodigious²⁷ giant," and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked²⁸ and taloned²⁹ man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the naivest³⁰ way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy³¹ between these watered statistics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for sentence. He ended by condemning³² me to die at noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before he named the date.

I was in a dismal³³ state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing³⁴ being doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slopshops. Still, I was sane³⁵ enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of the terms used in the most matter-offact way by this great assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would have made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Roderick Random," and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our own nineteenth century -- in which century, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable in English history -- or in European history, for that matter -- may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, instead of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur's people were not aware that they were indecent and I had presence of mind enough not to mention it.

They were so troubled about my enchanted³⁶ clothes that they were mightily³⁷ relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficulty away for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why they were so dull -- why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs³⁸! And dear, dear, to think of it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussed me; and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage. Queen Guenever was as naively³⁹ interested as the rest, and said she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It was the only compliment I got -- if it was a compliment.

Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous⁴⁰ clothes in another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon⁴¹, with some scant⁴² remnants for dinner, some moldy⁴³ straw for a bed, and no end of rats for company.