Mortal Humor
Humor sometimes comes out on the very scaffold. An old man was once hanged for complicity in a murder. The rope broke, and he fell heavily to the ground. His first utterance when his breath returned to him was, "Ah, sheriff, sheriff, gie us fair hangin'."
His friends demanded that he should be delivered up to them, as a second hanging was not contemplated in the sentence. But the old man, looking round on the curious crowd of gazers, and lifting up his voice, said, "Na, na, boys, I'll no gang hame to my neighbors to hear people pointing me oot as the half-hangit man; I'll be hangit oot."
And he got his wish five minutes after.
A Fruitful Field
The following anecdote was communicated to me by a gentleman who happened to be a party to the conversation detailed below. This gentleman was passing along the road not one hundred miles from Peterhead one day. Two different farms skirt the separate sides of the turnpike, one of which is rented by a farmer who cultivates his land according to the most advanced system of agriculture, and the other of which is farmed by a gentleman of the old school.
Our informant met the latter worthy at the side of the turnpike, opposite his neighbor's farm, and seeing a fine crop of wheat upon what appeared to be (and really was) very poor and thin land, asked, "When was that wheat sown?"
"O, I dinna ken," replied the gentleman of the old school, with a sort of half indifference, half contempt.
"But isn't it strange that such a fine crop should be reared on such bad land?" asked our informant.
"O, na—nae at a'—devil thank it; a gravesteen wad gie guid bree gin ye geed it plenty o' butter." [[7]]