Scottish Jokes

The innkeeper at Banchory on Deeside was Sanders Paul, a noted source of mordant humour. When one of his regular cronies was drowned in the river and swept downstream past Banchory before being pulled out at Crathes, Sanders’s only recorded comment was, ‘That’s the first time I’ve known him to go past the inn without coming in for a glass.’

An old Highland crofter lost his wife and his cow on the
same day. All his friends came to console him on the death of his wife, and some of them were not slow to drop a hint about possible replacements from among the widows of the parish. The fifth time this happened, his patience broke. ‘You are all keen to fix me up with a new wife,’ he said, ‘but no one is saying anything at all aboot a cow.’

An elderly couple were annoyed not to be invited by the
family to the funeral of a distant acquaintance. ‘Never mind, John,’ said the wife, eyeing her aged husband. ‘Maybe we’ll be having a funeral of our own before long, and we’ll not ask them.’

Witches’ prophecies should be closely studied, as many
have discovered to their cost. One such was Alexander
Sutherland, a sixteenth-century scion of the earl of
Sutherland. Alexander was ambitious to become the earl
himself, and consulted some local witches as to his chances. He was encouraged to hear one of them say, ‘Your head shall be the highest that ever was of the Sutherlands.’ Unfortunately for Alexander, this meant that his bid for the earldom would fail, and his head would be impaled on the highest point of Dunrobin Castle.

At a christening in Pitlochry, the infant’s father had begun celebrating before the service, and appeared somewhat unsteady as he held the child at the font. The minister gave him a sharp look and said: ‘I hope that you are fit to hold up that child.’ ‘Fit?’ said the father. ‘Hold up the bairn? I could fling it right over the church steeple.’

The blacksmith’s shop was often a place where men who
had nothing better to do would gather. The smith himself
was often a storyteller, frequently of tall stories. Many years ago, Andrew Mackintosh told the Gaelic Society of
Inverness of one such:

I remember a blacksmith in my childhood days who was
wont in all seriousness to tell gaping rustics of a feat he
had accomplished when he was a younger man. On one
occasion a carnage and a pair of horses pulled up at his
smithy door. The horses had dropped some of their
shoes, and a journey of fifteen miles lay before them.
The mission of the occupant of the carriage was urgent
and brooked no delay. What was the best the smith could do? He chanced to have ready-made shoes, and he
requested the driver to proceed on his journey at top
speed, and the shoeing would meantime be attended to.
Picking up shoes and nails and a hammer, he started to
run alongside the horses. Each time a horse raised his
hoof a nail was driven home, and after covering a short
distance the shoeing was satisfactorily completed.

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