X700 – X799  

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In the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, the category X700 – X799, a subcategory of X, Humor, is reserved for sexual humour. It is left blank because in the words of Stith Thompson:

" ... Thousands of obscene motifs in which there is no point but the obscenity itself might logically come at this point, but they are entirely beyond the scope of the present work. They form a literature to themselves, with its own periodicals and collections. In view of the possibility that it might become desirable to classify these motifs and place them within the present index, space has been left from X700 to X799 for such motifs (Thompson 1955-8, 5:514)."

Humor concerning sex

• X750. Jokes on old maids. *Types 1475 -- 1499.
  • X751. Marriage forbidden outside the parish. ---- An order is read in church forbidding the young people to marry girls from other parishes. *Type 1475.
  • X752. The old maid in bed. ---- On one side is a bundle of straw (her husband) and on the other a dog (her child). She gives the straw bundle a push and thereupon falls on the floor herself. Type 1480*.
  • X753. A youth promises to marry an old maid if she will sit all night on the roof. ---- She falls down. Type 1479*.
  • X754. The meal of beans. ---- One of the old maid's three teeth breaks off. Type 1478.
  • X755. The wolf steals the old maid. ---- She keeps him for a husband. Type 1477.
  • X756. The mother trains the old maid to speak properly. ---- Absurd results. Types 1485*, 1486*.
  • X757 Properly raised (polite) girl trained to think of obscene words as signifying decent things (eg, vagina-eye, penis-arm, etc.).
• X760. Jokes on courtship.

See

• Rationale of the Dirty Joke
• Toward a Motif-Index of Erotic Humor