The never a word had Dickie to say,
Sae he ran the lance through his fause bodie!
The characteristic form of English humour is more or less good-natured chaff, bearing the same relation to keen raillery as a bludgeon does to a rapier. A master of this fence was Dr. Johnson, who, if his pistol missed fire, knocked you down with the butt end of it. Sydney Smith’s residence in Edinburgh should have given him a finer style, which he turned to so unworthy use in mocking at Scottish “wut.” As to the distinction between wit and humour, I know of no better than that which defines the one as a flash, the other as an atmosphere. It may be granted that the Scottish nature does not coruscate in flashes. But what your Sydney Smiths do not observe is that it develops a very high quality of humour, which has self-criticism as its essence. Know thyself, has been styled the acme of wisdom; and when the Scotsman’s best stories come to be analysed, the point of them appears to be a more or less conscious making fun of his own faults and shortcomings, which is a wholesomer form of intellectual exercise than that parrot-trick of nicknaming one’s neighbours. The bailie’s boast above quoted is a characteristic instance over which an Englishman may chuckle without seeing the true force of it. All those hoary Punch jests as to “bang went saxpence,” and so forth, are good old home-made Scottish stories, which the southron brings back with him from their native heath, and dresses them up for his own taste with a spice of malice, then rejoices over the savoury dish which he has prepared by seething poached kids in their mother’s milk. Yet often print fails to bring out the true gust that needs a Doric tongue for sauce; and the Englishman who attempts any Scottish accent is apt to merit their fate who ventured to meddle with the ark, not being of the tribe of Judah. The effect of such a story depends as much on the actor as on the words. To mention but one of many noted masters of this art, who that ever spent an evening with the late Sir Daniel Macnee, President of the Scottish Academy, could hold the legendary view of his countrymen’s want of fun? He had to be heard to be appreciated; but, at the risk of misrepresenting his gift, here is one of his anecdotes. He was travelling with a talkative oil merchant who, after much boast of his own business, began to rally the other on his want of communicativeness—“Come now, what line are you in?”—“I’m in the oil trade too,” confessed the painter, whereupon his companion fell to pressing him for an order.—“We’ll do cheaper for you than any house in the trade!” At last, to get rid of his persistency, Sir Daniel said, “I don’t mind taking a gallon from you.”—“A gallon! Man, ye’re in a sma’ way!”
Perhaps this humour is a modern production, like certain fruits cultivated in Scotland “with deeficulty.” There were times, indeed, when life here was no laughing matter. But even the sun-loving vine is all the better for a touch of frost at its roots, and the best wines are not those the most easily made. In contrast with other home-brewed fun that soon goes flat, and with such cheap brands as “Joe Miller,” the vintage of Scottish humour, if not distinguished by effervescing spurts of fancy, has body and character which only improve by age, keeping well even when decanted, and giving a marked flavour when mixed with less potent materials, into Punch, let us say. There is also a dry quality thrown away on palates used to the public-house tap; Ally Sloper, for instance, might not taste the womanthropy, as he would call it, of that bachelor divine who began his discourse on the Ten Virgins with “What strikes us here, my brethren, is the unusually large proportion of wise Virgins.” A good Scotch story, with the real smack upon the tongue, bears to be told again, like an aphorism distilled from the wisdom of generations. Sound humour is but the seamy side of common-sense, for a sense of the incongruous degenerates into nonsense if not shaped by a clear eye for the relation and proportion of things. If the reader will consider the many specimens of Scottish humour now current in England, or to be drawn from such treasuries as Dean Ramsay’s; and if he will reflect on their weight and minting, he may understand the value of this coinage in the national life.
The northern Attic salt abounds in one savour that appears in a hundred stories like that of the preacher who, at Kirkcaldy or elsewhere, apologised for his want of preparation: “I have been obliged to say what the Lord put into my mouth, but next Sabbath I hope to come better provided!” If there is any subject which the Scot takes seriously it is religion, that yet makes the favourite theme of his jests. Revilers have gone so far as to state that the incongruous elements of Scottish humour are usually supplied by a minister and a whisky bottle. It is certainly the case that a Scotsman relishes playing upon the edge of sacred things, and that the pillars of his church will shake their sides over stories which strike Englishmen as irreverent. But has not vigorous faith often shown a tendency to overflow into backwaters of comicality, as in the gargoyles of our cathedrals, the mediæval parodies of church rites, and the homely wit of Puritan preachers? There are some believers who can afford a laugh now and then at their sturdy solemnities, others who must keep hush lest a titter bring down their fane like a house of cards. Familiarity with the language of the Bible counts for a good deal in what seems the too free handling of it in the north. But note how the irreverence of the Scot’s humour is usefully directed against his own tendency to fanaticism. It is only of late years, I think, that he has taken to joking on the religious practices of his neighbours, whose shortcomings once seemed too serious for joking. That
“one” of the servant girl who described the services at Westminster Abbey as “an awful way of spending the Sabbath” may be taken as a sign of growing charity. Yet, in the past, too, a Scotsman seldom chuckled so heartily as over any rebuke to priestly pretension within his own borders. Jenny Geddes’s rough form of remonstrance with the dignitary who would have read the mass in her lug was a practical form of Scotch humour, that on such subjects is apt to have a good deal of hard earnest in it. As for the Kirk’s own ministers, the tyranny ascribed to them by Buckle has long been tempered by stories at their expense. Buckle’s famous comparison of Spain and Scotland is vitiated by his leaving out of account that natural sense of humour that has aided popular instruction in counteracting superstition. Dean Ramsay ekes out Carlyle and other weighty authors who explain how Irving found no depth of earth in Scotland for the seeds of his wild enthusiasm, and why the tourist seeks in vain for winking Madonnas at Kirkcaldy, long ago done with all relics and images but the battered figureheads of her whalers.