SARGASSO


And a final example:

 Tijan fa yon rAv. Li oul li
 kanpA d4van fothy papa Bondy4,
 li di: "Papa Bondy4, pou ou
 minm, yon milyon an6, se konbyin
 tan sa y?-" Bondy4 reponn li
 di: "0, sa se yon ti moman."
 Tijan di: "E yon milyon dpla
 se konbyin lajan?" Bondy4 di:
 "Aa, sa s4 tankou 5 kob." Tijan
 kouri r4ponn, li di: "Roy, papa
 Bondyd, banm 5 kob." La minm
 Bondy4 di: "Tann yon ti moman."

 Tijan had a dream in which he saw
 himself sitting at the foot of the
 Good Lord. Tijan asked the Lord,
 "Papa Bondye, for you, how long
 is a million years?" The Lord
 answered, "0 that's just like a
 minute." Next Tijan asked, "And
 for you, a million meals is worth
 how much money?" The Lord
 answered, "Ah that's like 5 cents."
 Tijan then quickly said, "Your
 Highness, papa Bondye, give me 5
 cents." Whereupon the Lord said,
 "Wait just a minute."

 These three Haitian blag clearly belong to the class
of jokes Freud calls cynical jokes and, furthermore, they
are disguising aggressive tendencies directed toward
Christianity in general and the authority of the Catholic
church in particular. The fact that the original
aggression is masked permits its expression--the
aggression here is just barely recognizable though the
final message is unmistakable: in suggesting that the
bountiful goodness of the Almighty is not all that good,
the Creole joke rebels against the demands of a morality
laid down by those who are, in Freud's words, "rich and
powerful and who can satisfy their wishes at any time
without any postponement" (Freud 1960: 110).