Aberdeen humour from Sir James Taggart

Found - a slim volume titled Stories told by Sir James Taggart. (Dundee, London : Valentine & Sons 1926.) This book is in a series of Scottish joke books which include the famous 'bizarre' book Jokes Cracked by Lord Aberdeen. 

Lord Aberdeen's pal Sir James Taggart, a former Lord Provost of Aberdeen, was also a famous storyteller, notably against his own townsmen of 'the granite city.' It was said of him that he told 1000 jokes a year. His mournful look in the above photo reminds one of the old saying that '...to a Scot a joke is no laughing matter..' Here are a few short ones to get the flavour:  'An Aberdonian went away for a month's holiday, taking with him a dark green shirt and a pound note. He changed neither of them.' Or try this: 'A traveller at Euston Station was booking a third class single to Inverness and was informed, "Change at Aberdeen.'' "Na, na," said the traveller, "I'll lake my change now, l've been in Aberdeen before." 

Almost all  the jokes are on the themes of incredible meanness and/or  drunkeness. Here are a selection of four the better jokes -the first about Lord Aberdeen himself :

 On one occasion when the Lord Aberdeen had been attending the assemblies in Edinburgh, he was walking along High Street when a drunken man knocked up against him.  A policeman reproved the man sharply, saying: 'Do you know that you have run into the Marquis of Aberdeen and Temair?'
'Good Lord!' said the man, 'am I as bad as that? Is there twa' of them?' 

Bawbees and Suet

A woman was in the habit of going to the butcher every Saturday to get two bawbees* for a penny, for the kirk collection. One Saturday night, after getting the two bawbees, the woman said, "Do ye no'gie a bit suet wi' that?" The butcher lost his temper. "You come here every Saturday night for two bawbees. I don't want to see you again." The woman waited till the storm passed and said: "That's fine way to treat your customers."

The Revolving Carpet

A Valuator called at certain house to value the furniture. He was so long in a room upstairs that the lady of the house went up to see what was that matter. She found him reclining peacefully in an easy chair, with an empty decanter on the table beside him. But he had not altogether neglected his duty because on a sheet of paper he had written: "Revolving Carpet - 1".

"Yer Nae Wrang"

An Aberdeenshire farmer was doing himself well at the Country Hotel, when the waitress came up and said, "Will you have a little whisky or a meringue?"
"Na, na lassie," replied that farmer, "yer nae wrong. Just fill up my glass".

*Bawbee= a halfpenny.

Warding off the Evil Eye

According to R.C. Maclagan's Evil Eye in the Western Highlands (Nutt, London 19 02) the Evil Eye superstition was widespread in the area well into the late 1800s. Possibly it still lingers in the Western Highlands of Scotland. The simplest way of telling who had the Evil Eye (the 'diagnostic mark') was to look out for persons with different coloured eyes but as he says 'all the parti-coloured eyes in Scotland would not account for a tenth part of the results accredited to evil eyes.' Atrtractive children were particularly prone and various dress codes are suggested to ward it off:

THINGS THAT SPECIALLY ATTRACT 

A woman of twenty-eight, whose information is quite 
reliable, the daughter of a respectable man in one 
of the inner islands, remembers when young people 
talked a great deal about these things, and many were 
very much afraid of them. "The idea was that it 
was always the best and prettiest of beast or body 
that was most liable to be injured by a bad eye. 
(My) youngest brother was awfully pretty when a child. 
They used to have him dressed in a red frock and 
white pinny, and with his fair skin, fair curly hair, 
and red cheeks, he was the nicest-looking child in 
all the place. Many a time, when my father would 
take him out, the neighbours would be warning him 
to take good care lest some one might do the child 
harm, and some would advise my father to go in and 
take the frock and pinny off him, so that he might not 
draw one's attention so much." 

From Ross-shire we hear the same thing. A 
native "remembers when he was young, people be- 
lieved in the Evil Eye and were afraid of it." It 
was supposed that pretty children were specially 
liable to be injured by it, and it was a common 
device with some mothers, in circumstances where 
there was any suspicion of danger, to take care that 
at-least some article of the child's dress would be at 
fault, either in respect of neatness or cleanness, or 
better still, to have one of the child's stockings turned 
outside in when being worn. These were supposed 
to form a protection to the child against injury.