An Exploration of Humor in Ms. Fr. 640

Charlotte Atkins and Siobhan Joyce-Farley, Fall 2021

When we decided to recreate and record riddles from Ms. Fr. 640 for our final project, our major interests were exploring accessible entry points into the manuscript and thinking about how modes of entertainment have and haven’t evolved across location and history. We thought that riddles and practical jokes would be easy to recreate authentically, and we assumed that their societal function would have stayed relatively fixed across time. Once we actually began to research and film the riddles, however, we realized our initial assumptions weren’t totally correct.

A huge help to us in understanding the societal context surrounding the riddles in the manuscript was Ann-Sophie Barwich’s “Sleight of Hand Tricks” essay. It was extremely helpful in explaining the often serious implications that riddles and magic tricks had in the sixteenth century – we had no idea that some tricks were considered malevolent or demonic, and even though these kinds of tricks weren’t the ones we recreated, the additional context was very useful. The essay also categorized the manuscript riddles into types, including the four riddles we selected. We chose ones from 34r, three “physical riddles” (finger on forehead, candlestick, and log) and one “mental riddle” (boots without spurs).

Recreating the riddles was fairly straightforward. The trickiest riddle to replicate was the candlestick riddle, not just because we lacked some physical materials (the candlestick, a servant) but because the riddle originally relied on a language pun that doesn’t translate in English – luckily the friend Charlotte performed the riddle on speaks French and was able to explain the joke for the video. Despite this, the riddle still worked on a more basic level (reversing expectations, exploiting assumptions made by the pranked person) and the ways it failed are still notable and worthy of mention. Many of the riddles translate to the present day as well as the more technical recipes do, but others don’t, and that’s okay too.

After performing some of the riddles we still believe they’re a great entry point into the manuscript. The entries emphasize that the desire to entertain in a social setting and have fun with friends isn’t a modern creation, and some of the riddles are strikingly similar to ones that float around middle schools today. Reflecting on the “boot without spurs” riddle (in which a person is challenged to say “boot without spurs” and fails because the joke is to say “boot” without saying “spurs”), a pranked friend remarked that it reminded her of the “spell ICUP” joke, where the pranked person is laughed at for saying the letters I-C-U-P. We think she’s right, “ICUP” could absolutely qualify as a mental riddle. The riddles reminded us of anti-jokes, in which the point is to anticipate the answerer’s response and negate it, making fun of the joke while still being a joke. The riddles simultaneously distance themselves from and participate in pranking, kind of like how other recipes in the manuscript counterfeit objects in such a way that the object’s exact likeness is replicated. While performing a riddle might not seem at first like a form of making, the riddles actually follow in Ms. Fr. 640’s throughline of mimicking in form while differing in substance. To perform a riddle is to replicate collected knowledge, and this holds true if performed in the sixteenth century or the modern day. For its simplicity and thematic resonance with Ms. Fr. 640 as a whole, we recommend riddling as an introduction to the manuscript.