Books: Misslouala

HUMOR OF THE OLD DEEP SOUTH— edited by Arthur Palmer Hudson—Macmillan ($5).

Readers who are looking for kinky-haired darky side-splitters and dry drawls of whittled wit will be sadly disappointed by Humor of the Old Deep South. They would have right on their side if they called the title a misnomer. Not primarily a collection of famed or fameworthy anecdotes but a regional anthology. Compiler Hudson's book is an academic barn-full of curious gleanings picked up from old Southern almanacs, church histories, colonial archives. State records, local newspapers, magazines. Professor Hudson's cross-section of the pre-Civil War Deep South, which he calls Misslouala (Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama) gives a kaleidoscopic picture that is interesting but rarely funny.

Humor of the Old Deep South is divided into sections on Indians, Hunters & Fishermen, Doctors, Lawyers, Politicians, Preachers, Players & Showmen, Barkeepers & Bonifaces, Broadhorn Boys & Steamboat Bullies, Pirates & Picaroons, Duelists, Ha'nts, Greenhorns, Ladies, Darkies et al. The humorous incidents have been laid so long in lavender that they have mostly lost their tang; but those who can turn the clock back in order to laugh might enjoy the tale about the young doctor who cupped the Negro wench's sternum; the anecdotes about Lorenzo ("Cosmopolite") Dow, pioneer of Southern Methodism; Mike Fink's misadventures with the Deacon's bull; the Carolina mother's advice to her departing son: "Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander or assault & battery. Always settle them cases yourself!"

From a political speech urging the establishment of a fish hatchery at Tupelo, Miss.: "Come visit with me in Tupelo. Come and go with me on College Hill some evening and see one of our Tupelo sunsets. Come and see one of our Southern silvery Tupelo moons. I think Tupelo is the only place in the South where we have the same beautiful moons we had before the war. . . . We have the ideal place for a fish hatchery at Tupelo. Why, sir, fish will travel over land for miles to get into the water we have at Tupelo. Thousands and millions of unborn fish are clamoring to this Congress today for an opportunity to be hatched at Tupelo."

A rollicking pig-Latin college song of the '50'S:

One night in anno fifty one,

Haec plan a pueris was begun Gandenter.

Intentis was agere pell-mell

Some porcos into the College well Violenter.

Pueri Colligunt in a group

And seqiumter porcos with a whoop, Multi sunt. . . .

Surprisingly few Civil War stories are included. One of them tells of Stonewall Jackson spying a straggler up a tree. " 'What the devil are you doing up a persimmon tree?' asked the General. 'Eatin' 'simmons, Gen'l, the private replied. 'What, eating persimmons in July!' exclaimed Stonewall. 'Why, man, don't you know they'll draw your stomach into a hard knot?' 'Waal, Gen'l, I figgered on that. I 'lowed to swink up my belly to fit my rations.' "