In all this mirthful teasing it is easy to see much that strikes us as cruel, or, at least, as unfeeling. It is only natural that the hilarity of peoples low down in the scale of culture should now and again take on this aspect; as when, for example, they are said to laugh exultantly at {232} the struggles of a drowning man.[171] Yet, on the whole, the merriment of these peoples, when the butt is a fellow-tribesman, though undoubtedly rough and often very coarse, does not seem to be so brutal as one might expect. We can understand the diversion of so large an amount of savage mirth into these practical channels—teasing, bantering and playing-off jokes upon members of ones tribe, by reflecting that laughter is a social process, and plays, as we shall see presently, a large part in the smooth working, if not also in the very maintenance, of the social fabric. In order to see the meaning of this teasing laughter, we must note the way in which it is accepted. There is no doubt, to begin with, that savages have by nature a lively dislike to being laughed at. It would be strange indeed if this were not so, seeing that both the monkeys below them and the white men above them display this aversion. This seems to have been specially noted in the case of certain races. The Weddas of Ceylon, who, as we have seen, have not impressed all visitors as laughter-loving, show a marked displeasure at being made the butt of a joke. We are told that they are much provoked (gereizt) when they are laughed at (ausgelacht). It is related of one of these men that, when during a dance he was thus treated by a European, he shot an arrow at the laugher.[172] Poor old folk among ourselves will, we know, do much the same when they are jeered at by {233} incautious boys, and even a youth has been known to shy a stone at a too robust jeerer. This dislike of being made the object of a facetious attention holds good of other savages as well. A writer tells us that a common fireside amusement among certain savages is to tease the women till they become angry, which always produces great merriment. The teasing, it is added, is of a rough and not very decent kind.[173] Further evidence of this distaste for the douche of a voluble laughter is supplied by the curious ordeals of the Greenlanders, to be spoken of presently.