Scottish Jokes

The tourist had just climbed the local hill and was enthusing about his experience. ‘The view was superb,’ he said. ‘You could see for miles, right out to sea. I think I got a glimpse of the North Sea on the horizon.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen further than the North Sea from there,’ said one of the locals, a bit of a ‘character’.
‘Further than that? But how?’
‘I’ve seen the Moon from up there.’

A fisherman in Crail was overheard to make the following
prayer before going out on a night that threatened to be stormy: ‘0 Lord God, my Beloved, if You would be so good as to take care of Jessie and Mary, my daughters, but that She- devil, my wife, the daughter of Peter MacPherson, I am indifferent about her; she will have another husband before I am finished being eaten by the crabs.’

The four lines of ‘The Crofter’s Prayer’ may have an origin
outside the Highlands — there is a whiff of anti-Highland
mockery about them. But they have been quoted in the
Highlands at least since the nineteenth century:

Oh, that the peats would cut themselves,
The fish jump on the shore,
And that Tin my bed could lie
And rest for ever more.

A croft on the west of Lewis was inhabited by two brothers. They shared all the tasks and their life was such a matter of routine that they scarcely needed to speak to one another; indeed days went by without a word being said. One day, one of the pair put on his jacket and cap, nodded to his brother, and set off down the track towards the Stomoway road. He was gone for five years, during which time he visited America and Australia, but eventually he returned to the ancestral home, where his brother was still digging in the field. On his arrival, the stay-at-home looked up. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked. The brother replied, ‘Out.’

A crofter was visiting the local post office and store in the days when urgent news still came by telegram. The postmaster handed him a message. ‘It’s a telegram for you, Jock. Your mother-in-law’s dead.’ ‘Man,’ said Jock, ‘Don’t make me laugh; I’ve got a cracked lip.’‘

How’s your mother the day?’ asked a neighbour of the
small boy from the next croft. ‘She’s no better,’ came the answer. ‘And there’s worse than that — the cow’s gone sick this morning.’

At the Highland Games in Blair Atholl, Perthshire, a strong looking but clearly elderly man put his name down for the
caber-tossing competition. He gave his age as seventy.
‘Don’t you think you’re a bit old?’ said one of the stewards. ‘Not a bit, not a bit. My father was going to enter, but he had to go and be best man at my grandfather’s wedding.’ ‘And how old is your grandfather?’
‘Oh, he’s a hundred and seven.’ ‘Fancy wanting to get married at that age,’ said the steward. ‘Och, he didn’t want to, at all. He had to,’ said the man.

A young couple from the Isle of Mull, wanting a quiet
wedding, went to Edinburgh to be married in a registry
office. ‘What is your name?’ asked the registrar of the man. ‘John MacLean,’ was the reply. ‘And yours?’ he asked the girl. ‘Shona MacLean.’ ‘Any connection?’ asked the registrar. Shona went bright red. ‘Only once,’ she murmured, after a moment, ‘and we was engaged already.’

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