THE SCOTS PIPER’S QUERIES;OR,JOHN FALKIRK’S CARICHES.[160]
THE SCOTS PIPER’S QUERIES;OR,JOHN FALKIRK’S CARICHES.[160]
Q. What is the wisest behaviour of ignorant persons?
A. To speak of nothing but what they know, and to give their opinion of nothing but what they understand.
Q. What time is a scolding wife at the best?
A. When she is fast asleep.
Q. What time is a scolding wife at the worst?
A. When she is that wicked as to tear the hair out of her own head, when she cannot get at her neighbours, and thro’ perfect spite bites her own tongue with her own teeth, my hearty wish is, that all such wicked vipers may ever do so.
Q. What is the effectual cure and infallible remedy for a scolding wife?
A. The only cure is to get out of the hearing of her, but the infallible remedy is to nail her tongue to a growing tree, in the beginning of a cold winter night, and so let her stand till sun-rising next morning, she’ll become one of the peacegblest women that ever lay by a man’s side.
Q. What time of the year is it that there is most holes open?
A. In harvest when there are stubbles.
Q. At what time is the cow heaviest?
A. When the bull is on her back.
Q. Who was the goodman’s muckle cow’s calf’s mother?
A. None but the muckle cow herself.
Q. What is the likeliest thing to a man and a horse?
A. A tailor and a mare.
Q. What is the hardest dinner that ever a taylor laid his teeth to?
A. His own goose, tho’ ever so well boiled or roasted.
Q. How many tods’ tails will it take to reach up to the moon?
A. One if it be long enough.
Q. How many sticks gangs to the bigging of a craw’s nest?
A. None for they are all carried.
Q. How many whit’s will a well made pudding prick need?
A. If it be well made it needs no more.
Q. Who was the father of Zebedee’s children?
A. Who but himself.
Q. Where did Moses go when he was full fifteen years old?
A. Into his sixteenth.
Q. How near related is your aunty’s good-brother to you?
A. No nearer than my own father.
Q. How many holes are there in a hen’s doup?
A. Two.
Q. How prove you that?
A. There is one for the dung and another for the egg.
Q. Who is the best for catching of rogues?
A. None so fit as a rogue himself.
Q. Where was the usefulest fair in Scotland kept?
A. At Millgavie.[161]
Q. What sort of commodities were sold there?
A. Nothing but ale and ill wicked wives.
Q. How was it abolished?
A. Because those who went to it once would go to it no more.
Q. For what reason?
A. Because there was no money to be got for them, but fair barter, wife for wife, and he who put away a wife for one fault got a wife with two as bad.
Q. What was the reason that in those days, a man could put away his wife for pissing the bed, and not for sh——g it?
A. Because he could shute it away with his foot and ly down.
Q. What is the reason now a-days, that men court cast marry, and re-marry so many wives, and only but one in public at last?
A. Because private marriage is become as common as smuggling and cuckolding the kirk no more thought of than a man to ride a mile or two upon his neighbour’s mare, men get will and wale of wives, the best portion, and properest person is preferred, the first left the weak to the worst, and she whom he does not love, he shutes away with his foot, and lies down with whom he pleases.
Q. How will you know the bairns of our towns by all others in the kingdom?
A. By their ill-breeding, and bad manners.
Q. What is their behaviour?
A. If you ask them a question in civility, if it were but the road to the next town, they’ll tell you to follow your nose, and if you go wrong curse the guide.
Q. Are young and old of them no better?
A. All the odds lies in the difference, for if you ask a child to whom he belongs, or who is his father, he’ll tell you to kiss his father’s a—.
Q. What sort of creatures is kindliest when they meet?
A. None can exceed the kindness of dogs when they meet in a market.
Q. And what is collie’s kindness there?
A. First, they kiss others mouths and noses, smell all about, and last of all, they are so kind as to kiss others below the tail.
Q. What is the coldest part of a dog?
A. His nose.
Q. What is the coldest part of a man?
A. His knees.
Q. What is the coldest part of a woman?
A. The back parts of her body.
Q. What is the reason, that these three parts of man, woman, and dogs, are coldest?
A. Fabulous historian say that there was three little holes in Noah’s Ark, and that the dog stopt his nose in one, and the other the man put his knee in it, a third and biggest hole broke, the woman bang’d her backside in it and these parts being exposed to the cold blast, make them always cold ever since.
Q. And what does the women do to warm their cold parts?
A. The married women turn their backsides to the goodman’s belly; virgins and those going mad for marriage the heat of their maidenhead keeps them warm, old matrons, whirl’d o’er maidens, widow and widows bewitch’d hold up their coldest parts to the fire.
Q. And what remedy does the poor dog take for his cold nose?
A. Stops it below his tail the hottest bit in his body.
Q. What is the reason the dogs are worst on the chapmen, than on other strange people?
A. It is said the dogs have three accusations against the chapmen, handed down from father to son, or from one generation of dogs to another; the first is as old as Æsop the great wit of Babylon, the dog having a lawsuit against the cat, gained the plea, and coming trudging home with the decree below his tail a wicked chapman throwing his ellwan at him, he let it fa’ and so lost all his privileges thereby. The second is, because in old times the chapmen used to buy dogs and kill them for their skins. The third, when a chapman was quarterd in a farmer’s house, that night the dog lost his property the licking the pot.
Q. What creature resembles most a drunken piper?
A. A cat when she sips milk; she always sings, and so does a piper when he drinks good ale.
Q. What is the reason a dog runs twice round about before he ly down?
A. Because he does not know the head of his bed from the foot of it.
Q. What creature resembles most a long lean, ill looking greasy-fac’d lady for pride?
A. None so much as the cat, who is continually spitting in her lufe and rubbing her face, as many of such ladies do the brown leather of their wrinkled chafts.
Q. Amongst what sort of creatures will you observe most of a natural law?
A. The hart and the hind meet at one certain day in the year; the brood goose, lays her first egg on Fasterns Even, old stile; the crows begin to build their nest the first of March old stile; the swans observe matrimony, and if the female die, the male dares not take up with another or the rest will put him to death; all the birds in general join in pairs and keep so; but the dove resembles the adulterer, when the shoe-one turns old, he puts her away, and takes another; the locusts observe military order, and march in bands; the frogs resemble pipers and preachers, for the young ride the old to death.
Q. Who are the merriest and heartiest people in the world?
A. The sailors, for they’ll be singing and cursing one another when the waves, their graves, are going over their heads.
Q. Which are the disorderliest creatures in battle?
A. Cows and dogs for they all fall on them that are neath-most.
Q. Who are the vainest sort of people in the world?
A. A barber, a tailor, a young soldier, and a poor dominie.
Q. What is the great cause of the barber’s vanity?
A. His being admitted to trim noblemen’s chafts, thyke their sculls, take kings by the nose, and hold a razor to his very throat, which no other subject else dare do.
Q. What is the great cause of the tailor’s pride?
A. His making of peoples new clothes, of which every person, young and old is proud of, then who can walk in a vainer shew than a tailor carrying home a gentleman’s clothes.
Q. What is the cause of a young soldier’s pride?
A. When he lists, he thinks he is free from his mother’s correction, the hard usage of a bad master, has a liberty to curse, swear, whore, and do every thing; until he be convinced by four halberts and the drummer’s whip that he has now got both a military and civil law above his head, and perhaps worse masters than ever.
Q. What is the cause of the poor dominie’s pride?
A. As he is a teacher of the young and ignorant, he supposes no man knows what he knows, the boys call him master therefore he thinks himself a great man.
Q. What sort of a song is it that is sung without a tongue, and its notes are understood by people of all nations?
A. It is a fart which every person knows to be but wind.
Q. What is the reason that young people are vain, giddy-headed, and airy, and not so humble as the children of former years?
A. Because they are brought up and educat after a more haughty strain, by reading fables, plays, novels, and romances; gospel books, such as the psalm-book, proverbs, and the catechisms are like old almanacks; nothing in vogue, but fiddle, flute, Troy and Babylonish tunes; our plain English corrupted with beauish cants, dont, wont, nen, and ken, a jargon worse than the Yorkshire dialect.[162]
Q. Why is swearing become so common amongst the Scot people?
A. Because so many lofty teachers come from the south amongst us, where swearing is practised in its true grammatical perfection, hot oaths, new struck, with as bright a lustre as a new quarter guinea.
Q. How will you know the bones of a mason’s mare at the back of a dyke amongst the bones of a hundred dead horses.
A. Because it is made of wood.
Q. Which are the two things not to be spared, but not to be abused.
A. A soldier’s coat, and a hired horse.[163]
Q. How is a man in debt like a nobleman?
A. Because he has many to wait on and call for him.
Q. How is swearing like a shabby coat?
A. Because it is a bad habit.
Q. How is a bad pen like a wicked and profligate man?
A. Because it wants mending.
Q. Why is a church bell like a story that is handed about?
A. Because it is often toll’d.
Q. What is a man like that is in the midst of a river and cannot swim?
A. He is like to be drowned.
Q. Why is a drawn tooth like a thing that is forgot?
A. Because it is out of one’s head.
Q. Why is a book like a tree?
A. Because it is full of leaves.
Q. Why is a good sermon like a plump pudding?
A. Because there is reasons in it.
Q. How is a whorish woman like a charitable person?
A. Because she brings her husband to a piece of bread.[164]
Q. How is a lawyer like a contentious person?
A. Because he breeds wrangling and jangling.
Q. Who is the greatest fool in the world?
A. A whore; for she hazards soul and body for a miserable livelihood.
Q. Who are the two greatest thieves in Great Britain?
A. Tea and Tobacco, for they pick the pockets of the whole nation.
Q. What is the difference between Ale-drapers and Linen-drapers?
A. Only this, the one cheats you with froth and the other with cloth.
Q. If Extortioners cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, where will Usurers, Tallymen, and Pawn-brokers go?
A. The same road with Extortioners.
Q. What is the consequence of immoderate gaming?
A. By cards and dice, a man is ruin’d in a trice, for gaming and whoring often hang together.
Q. What employments are likest to one another?
A. Soldiers and Butchers are bloody near relations, for they both live by slaughtering and killing.
Q. What are the two hardest things to be found, and yet they are both good in their kind?
A. Good women and good small beer.
Q. Who is the likest to a Boatman?
A. An hypocrite, who always look one way and rows another, in all his transactions.
Q. What are the five greatest rarities to be found in the world?
A. A black Swan, a Phœnix, an Unicorn, the Philosophers’ Stone, and a maiden at sixteen.
Q. What is the greatest folly that sensible people can be guilty of?
A. To go to law about trifles, for whatever way the plea end, the lawyers will be the greatest gainers.
Q. Who has the honestest trade in the world?
A. Ballad-singers; for they always deal with ready-money: and it is as ancient as the Siege of Troy, for Homer was a ballad-singer.
Q. What is the surest method for one to become both rich and respectable?
A. To be sober and industrious.
Q. What is the best method of overcoming the argument of a positive person?
A. Either to say with him, or give him no answer.
Q. What is the wisest course to be followed by a man who has a brawling and scolding wife?
A. To keep silent, and then she’ll bite her own fingers with anger.
Q. What thing is that which is lengthened by being cut at both ends?
A. A Ditch.
Q. What is that which was born without a soul, lived and had a soul, yet died without a soul?
A. The whale that swallowed Jona.
Q. What is the longest and the shortest thing in the world? the swiftest and the slowest? the most indivisible and the most extended? the least valued and the most regretted? without which nothing can be done? which devours all that is small, yet gives life and spirit to all that is great?
A. Time.
Q. What creatures are those which appear closely connected, yet upon examination are found to be three distinct bodies, with eight legs, five on one side, and three on the other; three mouths, two straight forwards, and the third on one side; six eyes, four on one side, two on the other: six ears, four on one side, and two on the other?
A. A Man and Woman on horseback.
Q. Why is a churchyard like an inn?
A. Because it receives weary travellers.
Q. Why is a carrotty[165]lady like a troop of soldiers?
A. Because she bears fire-locks.
Q. What did Adam first set in the garden of Eden?
A. His foot.
Q. How is it that a clergyman’s horse is like a King?
A. Because he is guided by a minister.
Q. What is the difference between a boiled sheep’s head and a sheep’s head boiled?
A. In the first the sheep is boiled and in the last the head is boiled.
Q. What kind of snuff is that, the more that is taken the fuller the box is?
A. It is the snuff off the candle.
Q. What relation is that child to its own father who is not its father’ own son?
A. Surely his daughter.
Q. What is that which is often brought to table, always cut, but never eaten?
A. A pack of cards.
Q. Where was Peter when his candle went out?
A. He was in the dark.
Q. What relation is your uncle’s brother to you who is not your uncle?
A. He must be your father.
Q. What difference is there between twice five and twenty and twice twenty five?
A. The former is 30, the latter is 50.
Q. Why is a brewer’s horse like a tap-ster?
A. Because they draw drafts of drink.
END OF THE CARICHES.