Scottish Humor

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Scottish Humor
By Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen

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Scottish Highlands & Lowlands

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Scottish Words in America
Place Names
Aberdeen (8)
Edinburgh (8)
Glasgow (7)
Mc… (100)
Nova Scotia (Canada)
bonnie
gang
haggas
laddie
lass
loch
wee
whisky (fr. Uisce beatha:
“water of life”)

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Scottish Pronunciations
No Great English
Vowel Shift:
about the house
bone, stone
how now brown cow.
light, night, right
Retention of OE /x/:
loch, night, right,
fought

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Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
• Because England does not have a language
academy (like the “acadamie française”) we use
dictionaries to settle language issues.
• The rise of dictionaries correlates with the rise of the
Middle Class.
• Up through Webster’s II with labels like “vulgar,”
“colloquial,” “slang,” “argot,” “jargon,” “Southern”
etc.
• But now there’s Webster’s III with no labels

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Johnson’s Dictionary & The Battle of Culloden
• Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary determined
spellings, analogies, structures, meanings
and significances.
• 1746 was the year that Johnson’s dictionary
was published.
• 1746 was the year that the Jakobean Duke of
Cumberland defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie
at the Battle of Culloden.

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After the Battle of Culloden (1746)
Highland Scottish Culture was Outlawed
Outlawed:
Carrying of firearms
Hurling of Tabors
Playing of bag pipes
Speaking of Scots Gaelic
Wearing of kilts & tartans
(McCrum 141-145)
So the teuchters fled
to:
Ireland
America
Australia
New Zealand
Africa

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Robert Burns (1759-1796)
• Bobbie Burns is the author of “Auld Lang
Syne.”
• Bobbie Burns is also the poet of “eating,
drinking and wenching.” (McCrum 152)
• I hae been blythe wi’ comrades dear;
• I hae been merry drinking;
• I hae been joyfu’ gath’rin gear;
• I hae been happy thinking.

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• But a’ the pleasures e’er I saw
• Tho’ three times double’d fairly
• That happy night was worth them
a’,
• Among the rigs o’ barley.

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Sir Walter Scott (1771-1831)
• Sir Walter Scott Scott wrote
– Ivanhoe
– The Heart of Midlothian
– Rob Roy and
– Quentin Durward

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Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-
1894)
• Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
– Treasure Island and
– Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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Scots Migrate to Northern Ireland
• 200,000 Scots migrated to Northern
Ireland.
• In turn, some two million of their
descendants migrated to America
during the 18th
, 19th
and the early part of
the 20th
Centuries.

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The Guid Scots Tongue
• The Scottish language in Scotland, in Ulster (Ireland), in Nova
Scotia (Canada) and Boston and Philadelphia (United States)
was distinct:
• “Bone” and “stone” were pronounced “bane” and “stane.”
• “Soft” “leave,” “bath,” “top” and “sick” were pronounced
“saft,” “lea’,” “tap,” and “seek.”
• “How now brown cow” would be pronounced “Hoo noo broon
coo.”

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The Scots Irish at War with the Irish Catholics
• In Ulster there are many security
measures:
– Jeeps
– Roadblocks
– Policemen
– Bullet-proof jackets
– Graffiti
– Damaged Buildings and Roads
– Guns

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Many Scots-Irish Migrate to America
• By 1776 (the year of America’s
independence) almost half of Ulster
had crossed the Atlantic.
• In the United States, one out every
seven colonists was Scots-Irish.

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Scots-Irish in America
• The Scots-Irish immigrants in Boston tended
to be intolerant, violent, unruly and poverty
stricken, so they weren’t too welcome.
• They moved South to Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
• In 1760, Benjamin Franklin estimated that 1/3
of Philadelphia was English, 1/3 was German,
and 1/3 was Scots-Irish.

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Scots-Irish Move West
Through the Cumberland Gap

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Scots-Irish Further Migration
• Most of the Scots-Irish kept going South towards the
Appalachian Mountains and on through the Cumberland Gap.
• They were on the American frontier and bore the brunt of
Indian hostilities.
• They settled in the Southwestern frontier.
• They tended to be fierce, clannish and unruly.
• They wore coonskin caps, carried Kentucky rifles, and were
really fond of whiskey.

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• The Scots-Irish were ferocious Indian
fighters, great boasters, and
compulsive storytellers. They had a
keen ear for a striking phrase.
• Some of them made it all of the way
west to Texas. Probably the most
famous of them was Davy Crockett at
the Alamo, who was part real, and part
legend. Crockett described himself
as…

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• “…fresh from the backwoods, half-
horse, half-alligator, a little touched
with snapping turtle, can wade the
Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride a streak
of lightning, slide down a honey locust
and not get scratched.”

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The Hillbillies
• The Scotch-Irish Hillbillies made stills and
brewed “moonshine.” They used words like
“afeared,” “damnedest,” “chaw u’ tabacker,”
“hex,” “plum right” or “plum crazy.” And
they’re great story tellers.
• They ate “bonny-clabber” (curdled sour milk)
and “flannel-cake (a thin wheat cake). They
provided English with the expression “you-
all.” And when they called the cows home at
night they used the Old-English “sūcan”
meaning “suck.”

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• The Hillbillies said “tharr,” “barr,” and Herr”
for “there,” “bear,” and “here.”
• They dropped their final –g, and used the
Old-English “on” in front of –ing words, like
“a-huntin, and a-fishin.” They also used the
Old-English form of “it,” which was “hit.”
• These features are throughout the
Southwest, but are most prominent in West
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and the
Ozarks.

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Hillbilly Culture Becomes
Mainstream
• Today about twenty million people (10 % of Americans) claim
Scots-Irish ancestry.
• The Scots-Irish ballads are currently imitated and reproduced
throughout the United States.
• Dolly Parton, Pat Boone, Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson are
four of these ballad singers. (McCrum 168)
• Blue-Collar TV (Bill Engvall and Jeff Foxworthy, etc.) also are
great “Hillbilly” story tellers
• It is possible to see reruns of a sitcom called “The Beverly
Hillbillies.” It is about some hillbillies who struck oil and
moved to Beverly Hills in California.

Don Nilsen in Ferguson Kilt
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