How some jokes work in traditional Scottish anecdotes…

The author describes the mechanical aspects of some jokes. The joke might be “the odd and unexpected view which is taken of some matter”. 

 He writes: A junior minister having to assist at a church in a remote part of Aberdeenshire, the parochial minister (one of the old school) promised his young friend a good glass of whisky-toddy after all was over, adding slily and very significantly, “and gude smuggled whiskey.” His Southern guest thought it incumbent to say, “Hah, Minister, that’s wrong, is it not? You know it is contrary to Act of Parliament.” The old Aberdonian could not so easily give up his fine whisky to what he considered an unjust interference so he quietly said, “Oh, Acts o’ Parliament lose their breath before they get to Aberdeenshire.”

He said the anecdote illustrated “how deeply long tried associations were mixed up with the habits of life in the older generation”.

Or anecdotes might use the “dry application of the terms in a sense different from what was intended by the speaker”. He gives as an example the innocent and unsophisticated answers of children: An elder of the kirk [church] having found a little boy and his sister playing marbles on Sunday, put his reproof in this form, not a judicious one for a child: “Boy, do ye know where children go to who play marbles on Sabbath-day?’ “Ay,” said the boy, “they gang doun’ to the field by the water below the brig.”

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