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certain targets such as “stupid” or “canny” persons, blondes, lawyers, and sex.
In Davies’s opinion, stupidity jokes were “always told about those on the edge of
a country or a linguistic area, with the tellers being at the center” (Davies 2011:
254). This description applies also to Lemberg, which is geographically located at
the edge of the Slovenian territory, not far from the border with Croatia and at the
edge of Slovenian-speaking territory. Lemberg is situated also at the “economic
edge, well away from the important and dynamic economic and administrative
centers” (Davies 2011: 256). Ethnic jokes and humorous stories about stupidity
mock groups who are “peripheral to the central or dominant group or who are seen
by them as ambiguous” (Davies 1982: 384).
It seems that the jokes about stupidity are a part of identity building. Identities
are established through relations me/we-others. Observing others and their “other¬
ness” and “our” position with respect to “theirs” gives rise to an understanding of
one’s own identity. This results in the fact that we interpret ourselves in relation to
an Other (Gingrich 2004). In the case of joke-telling, “us” is the society from which
derives the teller, and the Other is the group that is mocked. Others are always
marked as different, their moral boundaries differ from those held by the insider¬
group, characterized as “us.” The group from which joke narration derives ascribes
to the mocking group “traits, which the group telling the jokes does not wish to
recognize among its own members” (Davies 1982: 384). There is no doubt that the
Lembergs are perceived as different in the eyes of their neighbors. This fact is cor¬
roborated by the humorous tales mentioned here, which are being told to this day,
if for no other purpose but to annoy the inhabitants of the market town, who are
reluctant to listen to them let alone tell them. Their difference and refusal to accept
set norms is expressed through every humorous tale connected with the Lemberg
settlement. We only have to look at the tale relating a story about the mayor of
Lemberg, who is elected by a louse choosing his beard to live in (ATU? 1268), to
understand that nothing in Lemberg functions along set norms.
Stories of the Lembergs
The most notorious and widely known tale of the Lembergs’ adventures relates
a story of a bull being dragged inside a bell tower (ATU 1210).
"It so happened that one day the Lembergs noticed grass growing in the gutter
under the roof of the bell tower. They were very displeased. But how could they
reach the grass and put it away? Cutting it down would be impossible, just leaving
3 The folktale tale index was first developed by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne in 1910. His work
was then upgraded by American folklorist Stith Thompson. In 2004, Hans-Jérg Uther, published the
work entitled The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography that is now called
Aarne-Thompson-Uther index, short ATU (Uther, 2004). This tale-type index organizes folktales into
categories like animal tales, fairy tales, religious tales, and also humorous tales. Each folktale type is
then further subdivided by motif patterns until individual types, under different numbers, are listed.