Robert Ford

“ Sydney Smith would never have misguided even the most hopelessly opaque of [33] his own countrymen. No humour in Scotch folk! No humour in Scotland! There is no country in the world that has produced so much of it. Of no other country under the sun can it be so truly said that humour is the common inheritance of the people. Much of the kind of humour that drives an Englishman into an ecstacy of delight, would, of course, only tend to make a Scotsman sad; but that is no evidence that the Scotch are lacking in their perceptions of the humorous. ”

“ Regarding the humorous side of the Waverley novels alone, which is all that concerns us here, one has only to think of Caleb Balderston, of Edie Ochiltree, of Cuddie Headrigg, of Andrew Fairservice; has but to utter aloud to himself the familiar “Ma conscience!” of Bailie Nicol Jarvie; the “Prodigious!” of Dominie Samson; the “Jeanie, woman!” of the Laird of Dumbiedikes—to have his mind peopled like a market-place with familiar figures, and his memory serving his tongue with passage upon passage, page upon page, and all with the freedom and rapidity of electric telegraphy. ”

“ No writer of any time—Burns alone excepted—has handled the native tongue to better purpose for the expression of every feeling of the human heart than has Sir Walter Scott; and in Jeanie Deans’ plea to the Queen for her sister’s life there is the finest example of simple pathos, dashed with the passion of hope struggling with despair, that is to be met with anywhere in literature. ”

“ It only shows that “some folks are no ill to please.” “The Cockney must have his puns and small jokes,” says Max O’Rell. “On the stage he delights in jigs, and to really please him the best of actors have to become rivals of the mountebanks at a fair. A hornpipe delights his heart. An actor who, for an hour together, pretends not to be able to keep on his hat, sends him into the seventh heaven of delight. Such performances make the Scotch smile—but with pity. The Scotsman has no wit of this sort. In the matter of wit he is an epicure, and only appreciates dainty food.” ”

“ Humour, I have already asserted, is part and parcel of a Scotsman’s being, and is common to all classes of the Scottish people; and the remark receives point from the fact that even the daft folk in our land are touched with a rough-and-ready sense of it. Idiocy, unhappily, has obtained in all countries, and among all peoples, and “Naturals,” and persons of sadly inferior intellect, have not been uncommon in Scotland. Like many another familiar figure in recent Scottish life, the village or parish idiot, however, is no longer apparent in the native highways and byways. ”

“ The Scottish Law Courts have been long and justly celebrated as an arena of wit and humour of the richest sort. But the facetious counsel and the witty and eccentric judge, like the humorous and quaint divine, no longer prevail; and the current collector of the native legal facetiæ who would present brilliant specimens and illustrations must riddle the records of past generations to find them, or else adopt the simpler method, which has been most frequently followed, of riddling the riddlings of those who have successfully riddled the records before them. ”

“ Woe to the man who offends his pride or vanity! ‘I may forgive, but I cannot forget,’ is a favourite saying. He will stand by a friend to the last; but let a breach be once made, and it is most difficult ever again to repair it as it once was. The grudge is immortal.” Here is a case in proof:—
A Highlander was visited on his death-bed by his clergyman, who exhorted Donald to prepare himself for another world by a sincere repentance of all the crimes he had committed on earth, and strongly urged the absolute necessity of forgiving his enemies. ”

“ Hawkie’s besetting sin was an inveterate love of ardent spirits. “I am surprised, Hawkie,” said a person remonstrating with him one day on his dissolute life, “that a person of your knowledge and intellect can degrade himself by drinking whisky until you are deprived of reason, and with whom the brute could justly dispute pre-eminence. I would allow you two glasses per day, if you can’t want it, but not more.”
“Now, that’s fair,” replied the wit; “but will ye lodge’t in a public-house? Man, ye dinna ken what I hae to do. ”

“ JAMIE FLEEMAN, THE LAIRD OF UDNY’S FOOL
Jamie Fleeman, the Laird of Udny’s Fool, the most illustrious, was probably the very last of his order in Scotland. A real “natural,” Jamie had, notwithstanding, rare “glimmerings of common-sense,” as Bailie Nicol Jarvie avowed concerning the Dugal Craitur, and possessed a pungency of ready wit and humour and withering sarcasm which caused him to be dreaded as a foe and trusted as a friend. ”

“ HUMOURS OF SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION
It is consistent with the earnestness of the Scottish character that, so long as the light of intelligence was but feebly diffused in the land, there should be a strong tendency towards superstitious imagining in the minds of the people. For superstitious notions, be it noted, have not been wont to spring so much out of listless as out of restless ignorance. Each notion and theory they embrace, however wild and wide of the mark, has been a guess at the truth. ”

“ He is a shrewd, canny-going, scranky-looking individual. Fond of snuff, and susceptible to the allurements of a sly dram. He is proud of his office—the more solemn and conspicuous duties of which he performs with a dignity of deportment and solemnity of countenance which casts the minister almost hopelessly into the shade. ”

“ In England the punning and eccentric epitaph has prevailed to a greater extent even than in Scotland. Every representative collection of tombstone literature reveals this fact. Scotland alone, however, has produced an abundant crop. So much, indeed, as to form quite a distinct and interesting department of the humour of the country. The utter unpreparedness of the mind for the reception of humour in such a place as a kirkyard has occasionally, no doubt, helped what was incongruous to pass for humorous, as from the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step ”

“ Every parish has its daft Jamie, daft Willie, or daft Davie, as the case might be; and being all touched, less or more, with a sense of humour, as we have said, and daring to give audible speech to unpleasant truths, which sane persons dared not more than think, many good stories are told of them. Not unfrequently they exhibited a degree of cunning and readiness of wit quite unlooked for in members of their class. Thus, whilst lounging listlessly along the roadside one day, a North country natural was accosted by a late Professor in one of our Universities. ”

“ Much of the old clerical humour of Scotland came direct from the pulpit, and was part and parcel of the pastoral matter and method of the time. The preaching of to-day gives but the faintest idea of the preaching of a hundred years ago. The sermon of the old divine was very much in the style of an easy conversation, interspersed with occasional parentheses applicable to individual characters or to the circumstances which arose before his eyes in church. ”

“ Donald Macleod from Linlithgow to Glasgow was deeply resented by the beadle, who also held the office of sexton. When Mr. Macleod first went to Linlithgow, the beadle took him into the graveyard, and, showing him the resting-places of his predecessors, said, “There’s whaur Dr. Bell lies; and there’s whaur Dr. Dobie lies; and there’s whaur you’ll lie if you’re spared.” As Mr. Macleod was taking his departure, the beadle said, “Weel, sir, ye’re the first minister that was ever lifted out o’ Linlithgow except to the grave.” ”

“ O, madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sorrow for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whase mind is sae tossed that she can be neither ca’d fit to live or dee, hae some compassion on our misery! Save an honest house from dishonour, and an unhappy girl, not eighteen years of age, from an early and dreadful death! Alas! it is not when we sleep saft and wake merrily oursel’s that we think on other people’s sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we are for righting our ain wrangs and fighting our ain battles. ”

“ Sandy, on the other hand, has regarded himself individually as the ideal man—the noblest work of his Creator—and has declared the English to be “maybe no sae very bad considerin’, but even at the best neither mair nor less than a parcel o’ upsettin’, ignorant, pock-puddin’s.” It has been English money in general, but Scotch brains in particular, he has asserted time and again, that have made London what it is. “All the brightest intellectual luminaries of your London firmament,” he has told John Bull, “have been nursed and reared amid the hills o’ Bonnie Scotland.” ”

“ I have remarked on how strongly the practice of dram-drinking had established itself in the social life of Scotland. It is the sore spot in our national character—a distinct characteristic (happily on the wane) —and the inducements to participation have been often novel and therefore humorous. Well-to-do individuals long ago frequently gave instructions to their relatives likely to survive them to be sure and have plenty of whisky at their funerals. ”

“ But amongst all the tatterdemalion class of public entertainers, street beggars, etc.—and their name is legion—there has not perhaps appeared within the memory of living men one who was better known whilst he lived, and whose memory is likely to remain longer green, than the animated bundle of rags and bones known amongst men by the self-created pseudonym which stands at the head of this paper. Verily, who has not heard of Hawkie; and where in broad Scotland have not his jibes and jests, his flashes of wit and humour, not been told and retold? ”

“ Old customs, like old prejudices, no matter how absurd they may be, die hard; but with the general advance of education in Scotland, and the dissemination of cheap and healthy literature, the people are becoming day by day more distinctly convinced of the many ludicrous absurdities connected with our social habits, particularly with the old-fashioned ideas relating to hospitality and conviviality, and with the practice of persistent and indiscriminate dram-drinking. ”

“ He sat down, and a Highland chief, Sir Robert Bleakie, of Blair Athol, presenting a front like an old battle-worn tower, quietly arose in his place, and with the utmost simplicity and good-nature remarked, “Gentlemen, I, when I am in my cups, and the generous wine begins to warm my blood, if I hear a man rail against the Scotch, have an absurd custom of kicking him at once out of the company. ”

“ Thus it was that the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and even the waters under the earth, became peopled with fairies, brownies, hobgoblins, waterkelpies, warlocks, ghosts, and witches. The powers attributed to these—each monster and spirit in its place—afforded to the popular mind an explanation of what, in the circumstances, was otherwise inexplainable, and thus, so long as ignorance abounded, superstition did much more abound. As the world has grown older the people have, happily, [343] grown wiser. The grosser superstitions of Scotland have entirely disappeared. ”

“ Speaking of trespassing, I am reminded of a story which reveals how ready-witted the rural inhabitants can sometimes be. One day, many years ago, Willie Craig, a Perthshire village worthy, found himself in the near vicinity of Scone Palace, and by cutting through the woods there he would reach his destination much sooner than by holding to the public road. The old Earl of Mansfield could never distinguish between a trespasser and a poacher, and Willie knew this, and that if he was seen he would, at the very least, be turned back. ”

“ We have so far here been looking at Donald’s humour on its least favourable side; having been viewing it, so to speak, in the garb of the Sassenach only. Let us now glance at a few examples in full Highland costume. And here at once is an instance showing rare shrewdness and wit combined. A Highland piper having a pupil placed in his hands by his chief, and not knowing the notes of music—the semibreves, minims, crotchets, and quavers, etc.—by the proper designations, although he knew each one by head mark, and its musical value very well, set to work in this way. ”

“ The simplicity of rural love-making, to unsuccessful as well as successful issues, has found illustration in many a humorous tale of Scottish life and character, but seldom with truer naivete than in the subjoined narrative of Betty’s courtship and marriage, from the pen of an unknown author. It first appeared in an Edinburgh newspaper many years ago, and afforded the ground plan of the late Alexander M’Laggan’s popular and really clever song, “Tibby and the Laird.” ”

“ The Minister gazed a while at the mal-apropos wit—“Make a Scotsman of you, sir, that is impossible, for I cannot give you prudence.”
Prudence is just what Paddy has always lacked, and what to all appearance he is never to learn. Had it been a special characteristic of John Bull, it would have saved him from many a coup he has received at the instance of his cautious and calculating brother Sandy, the following among the rest. ”

“ Dr. Lawson, of Selkirk, a pious, able, and esteemed man, was reputed for indulging in those sallies of humour which not unfrequently avail in conveying salutary council when a graver method would prove ineffectual. His medical advisor, says Dr. Charles Rogers, had contracted the unworthy habit of using profane oaths. The Doctor had sent for him to consult him upon the state of his health, when, after hearing a narrative of his complaints, the physician rather angrily said, “Damn it, sir, you are the slave of a vile habit, and you will not soon recover unless you at once give it up.” ”

“ For an Englishman’s wit (he has little or no humour) being an acquired taste, comes out “on parade”—it is a gay thing—while Scotch folks’ humour being the common gift of Nature to all and sundry in the land, differing only in degree, slips out most frequently when and where least expected. Famous specimens of it come down from our lonely hillsides—from the cottage and farm ingle-nooks. ”

“ No collection of the national humours could be regarded as representative or complete that did not contain more than a passing reference to the Laird of Macnab, who was the hero of many a ludicrously funny story, and who, like Sir John Falstaff, was not only witty himself, but frequently the cause of wit in others. ”