Are there humorous proverb texts?
Are there humorous proverb texts?

Summary/Abstract: In folklore research the notion and the meaning of “humour” are generally unclear and underdeveloped. Proverbs are usually considered as “witty”, therefore they seem to be “humorous”. But, in fact, the vast majority of proverbs are not humorous. “All proverbs” might be humorous in a specific context or usage, but this does not mean that the proverb texts themselves are humorous. The paper discusses a famous Hungarian proverb collection, published by Z. Ujváry, in which a single peasant informant, in each case with his own classification, wrote down 1,143 proverbs and sayings. Only 38 items (i.e. 3.5%) were labelled by him as “joking, ironic, mocking, malicious”, etc. The analysis of the proverb texts shows that only very few proverb texts (less than 1%) have a sense of humour. The author has used a modern Hungarian proverb collection as test material, and is convinced about the assumption: only a very small percentage of the proverb texts are humorous in themselves.

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