Foolstowns

In times before ethnic and national associations and boundaries were at the forefront of popular identity, foolstown jokes, tales, and myths provided an early method by which undesirable characteristics could be ascribed to an outsider through humor. The foolstown represented a town whose residents would be depicted as fools in jokes and stories. This entry explains the connection between foolstown jokes and later forms of ethnic joking. It then offers two examples of foolstowns: first, through a focus on Chelm in southeast Poland, and second, with a discussion of Gotham (which is actually a village) in Nottinghamshire, England.

In the modern age, ethnic jokes have regularly described different groups as either stupid or canny, among other characteristics. The ethnic groups labeled stupid or canny in joking are usually ones that exist as a peripheral concern to the jokers of the center, with the periphery being defined through power or colonial relations. Such jokes also form a clear method of stereotyping. Foolstown joking represents a premodern variety of ethnic jokes on stupidity, thus the existence of the foolstown exhibits how humor had a role in “othering” that predates the onset of modernity. The foolstown was usually of the periphery and, from the center, appeared less sophisticated. The connection and overlap between premodern joking and modern ethnic joking does not end there. Jokes also existed about towns whose residents had supposed canny characteristics, thus completing the enduring dichotomy. Many of the targets of both canny-town and foolstown joking were also residents with an ethnic or religious difference to that of the center, thereby laying the foundation for modern ethnic joking.

“Wise” men often lived in the foolstown and these wise men would offer the townspeople “solutions” to various problems when called upon. One tale about Chelm, retold for children by Florence Freedman in 1990, describes how the Polish town boasted seven wise men. In the tale, the town's shops are robbed by bandits by night and so the shopkeepers call on the wise men to prevent future robberies. First, the wise men suggest sleeping by day and opening the shops by night. This proves to be not so good for business. They deliberate further, leading to the appointment of a night watchman. This solution is also flawed because the watchman is beset by problems that prevent him from watching the town. First, he is too cold. Next, his new sheepskin coat attracts wolves. Later, he cannot ride the horse he sits upon to escape from the wolves. Finally, he cannot stop the bandits because the horse is tied to a tree.

This story uses false reasoning to construct humor. Other examples of stories about Chelm see the townsfolk try to capture the light of the moon in a bucket and attempt to create more space in the town by pushing back the mountains that surround them. The foolstown jokes of Chelm have been described as a part of the tradition of Jewish humor, and may well have been told by Western European Jews toward their Eastern European neighbors, thus mocking the provincialism of those on the periphery. They may also have been told by many non-Jewish individuals, with or without anti-Semitic intent.

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