Scottish Jokes

Highlanders share the general Scottish relish for deathbed
jokes. One tells of a notorious robber of sheep and cattle, Donald MacGregor, who had survived against the odds to die a natural death. At the point of expiry, he was visited by the minister, who sternly invited him to repent, reminding him that all his crimes would rise up against him at the day of judgement.
‘What?’ gasped Donald. ‘All the sheep and the cows, and
the other things I helped myself to, they will be there in
front of me?’ ‘Indeed they will.’ ‘Och, well, that will be all right, then,’ said the sinner, relieved. ‘Just let every gentleman take what is his own, and Donald will be an honest man again.’

The tenant of a castle, having rented it for the shooting
season, also had the benefit of the services of the laird’ s
piper, Lachlan. At the end of dinner, the piper would come in and play a pibroch. The butler always had a large glass of whisky standing ready, which Lachlan would down quickly. But on the third evening, the tenant forbade the glass, unwilling to see his expensive malt whisky given to a mere piper. The playing that night was execrable. Even the tenant could tell that something was amiss. ‘What is the matter with your piping tonight, Lachlan?’ asked one of the guests, who knew him.
‘Oh, the pipes are hard tonight,’ said Lachian, his eye on
the tenant. ‘Terrible hard. They need softening.’
‘How do you soften them?’ asked the tenant.
‘They need malt whisky,’ replied Lachlan.
Somewhat reluctantly, the tenant ordered a glass of malt
whisky to be brought, and Lachlan swiftly downed it.
‘But I thought you said it was for the pipes!’ expostulated
the tenant. ‘Indeed and it is,’ said Lachlan. ‘But the thing is, you have to blaw it into them.’


‘Sticky-fingered’ is an insult pipers from the North will
sometimes throw at a bagpipe player from south of the
Highland Line. It comes from an occasion when lain Dali
Mackay, ‘Blind Ian’, was a pupii at the MacCrimmon
piping college on Skye. After supper one day, lain had
played a piece, and had been followed by a piper from the South. The master asked the second player why he had not played like lain Dali. ‘By St Mary,’ the lad said, ‘I’d do so if my fingers had not been after the skate,’ alluding to the fish they had had for supper.

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