|
This Glasgow recreation signifies
nothing more than the thrusting of absurdities, wholesale and retail, down
the throat of some too credulous gaper. Whether the
gegy come in the shape of a compliment
to the geggee, some egregious piece of butter which would at once be
rejected by any mouth more sensitive than that for whose well-known
swallow it is intended, or as some wonderful story gravely told with every
circumstance of apparent seriousness, but evidently involving some sheer
impossibility in the eyes of all but the obtuse individual who is made to
suck it in with the eagerness of a starved weanlin, or in whatever other
way the gegg may be disguised, the
principle of the joke is the same in its essence.
A few individuals particularly
skilled in this elegant exercise erected themselves into a club, the sole
object of which was the more sedulous and constant cultivation of their
peculiar pranks. The club took the name of the Gegg College, and some of
the very first men in the city did not disdain to be matriculated in its
paltry album. The site of this enlightened university was an obscure
tavern, or oyster-house; and here its eminent professors were always to be
found at the appointed hours, engaged in communicating their precious lore
to a set of willing disciples. Failing the required supply of gullable
flats, the members sharpened their wits in more secret conclave among
themselves, sparring, as it were, in their gloves. But these sportive
exercises lacked the zest of credulous swallow.
But when an uninitiated victim was
secured, the solemn triumph of the gegger, and the grim glee of the silent
witnesses of his dexterity, whose applause was visible in their sparkling
eyes, need not be dilated upon, but had better be left to the imagination
of the reader. If the club had a patron saint, it is to be presumed such
would be the renowned Baron Munchaussen. |
