THISTLEDOWN
- New and Enlarged Edition, 1913
- Second Impression, 1914
- Third Impression, 1919
- Fourth Impression, 1921
Scotch folks humour, being the common gift of Nature to all andsundry in the land, differing only in degree, slips out most frequentlywhen and where least expected. Famous specimens of it comedown from our lonesome hillsides—from the cottage and farmingle-nooks.—Page 34.
Frontispiece.
THISTLEDOWN
A BOOK OF SCOTCH HUMOUR
CHARACTER, FOLK-LORE
STORY & ANECDOTE
BY
ROBERT FORD
EDITOR OF
“BALLADS OF BAIRNHOOD,” “AULD SCOTS BALLANTS”
“VAGABOND SONGS,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY JOHN DUNCAN
PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER
Publisher by Appointment to the late Queen Victoria
An eminently learned and genial ex-Professor ofone of our Universities not long since pointedout how Scotland was remarkable for three things—Songs,Sermons, and Shillings. And whilst it maynot be disputed that she has enormous and ever-increasingstore of these three good things—andthat, moreover, she loves them all—there is a fourthquality of her many-sided nature which is moredistinctly characteristic of Auld Caledonia and herpeople, and that is the general possession of thefaculty of original humour. Not one in ten thousandof the Scottish people may be able to produce a goodsong, or a good sermon; not one in twenty thousandof them may be able to “gather meikle gear andhaud it weel thegither;” but every second Scotsmanis a born humourist. Humour is part and parcel ofhis very being. He may not live without it—maynot breathe. Consequently, it is found breakingout amongst us in the most unlikely as well as inthe most likely places. It blossoms in the solemn[4]assemblies of the people; at meetings of Kirk-Sessions;in the City and Town Council Chambers; in ourPresbyteries; our Courts of Justice; and in the highParliament of the Kirk itself. Famous specimens ofit come down from the lonesome hillsides; from thecottage, bothy, and farm ingle-nooks. It issuesfrom the village inn, the smiddy, the kirkyard; andfunctions of fasting and sorrow give it birth as wellas occasions of feasting and mirth. It drops fromthe lips of the learned and the unlearned in the land;and is not more frequently revealed in the eloquenceof the University savant than in the gibberish of thehobbling village and city natural.
Humorous Scottish anecdotes have been an abundantcrop; and collectors of them there have beennot a few. Dean Ramsay’s garrulous and entertainingReminiscences, an