Saturday, August 16, 2008

Moldavian Joke #1

Are there any Moldavians in this evening? No? Alright!! This Moldavian goes to visit another village* and wants to buy a pig. He asks the first man he comes across how much his pig costs. The villager holds out all the fingers of his hands, so he counts out 10 golden beans from his pocket. The villager then slaps him around the face and goes off cursing. Perplexed, our man then asks the next villager he comes across, is again shown two splayed hands, and is once again hit around the face when he proffers 10 golden beans. This happens the requisite 3 times until he meets a man who accepts his payment gratefully and hands over a pig. Our hero inquires as to why the other villagers were so angry. “My friend”, says his trading partner, “nobody in this village has 10 fingers; I myself was born with 8. Good luck with the pig.”

* In reality this would never happen. But for the purposes of this joke we're going to imagine that he’s noticed the signs of inbreeding in his pigs, and so is looking to sire his gilts from other bloodstock; he’s thinking of trying to use a goat, but failing that another pig would probably do.

6 comments:

  1. No, I don't get it. Is the tag to Eric Bristow a clue?

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  2. Thanks for swinging by, GB. The first people he asked had more than 10 fingers and wanted to be paid accordingly (e.g. 11 or 12 pieces of gold); the one with 8 fingers was only asking for 8 and was happy to receive 10. (Oh dear, I've now made this joke sound like something out of Puzzle Corner in a Sunday supplement!) Darts God Eric Bristow was born with 6 toes on one of his feet.

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  3. It's obscure, but eventually pleasing. How did you find out about Eric Bristow's obvious balance advantage, that clearly helped him on the ockey?

    Reminds me of a friend whose girlfriend used to be married to a Swiss comedian. And that was his best joke.

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  4. Brillant, it really makes you think. Shows that bigotry is no bar to intelligence either.

    The first Moldovan joke I heard was in Moscow in 1989 - yes, the Russians mock them too.

    Question: Why do Moldovan cars have the windscreen wipers on the inside?

    Answer: Because Moldovans drive like this (grabs imaginary wheel like an 8-year-old and blows a long raspberry).

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  5. Glad you like it, even though it took a bit of explaining. (Actually, I confess that I made this joke up myself, so it’s still “work in progress” and hasn’t quite entered the folk tradition yet.) But the wife got your Moldavian joke immediately, Boyo, which is nice as usually there's a continent of difference between what we find funny in the Dilo household. (Sadly, Transylvanian jokes seem often to boil down to "Romanians hate Hungarians and wish they were dead"; even Bernard Manning would have difficulty working such material into his act.)

    Very perspicacious of you, MC; the Crafty Cockney’s detractors have indeed accused him of using his polydactylity to give him an unfair balance advantage on the ockey, counteracting the usual genetic abnormality of darts players that we know as beergut syndrome.

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