Q. What time of the year is it that there is most holes open?
Q. Who was the goodman’s muckle cow’s calf’s mother?
Q. What is the likeliest thing to a man and a horse?
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?
Q. How many sticks gangs to the bigging of a craw’s nest?
Q. How many whit’s will a well made pudding prick need?
Q. Who was the father of Zebedee’s children?
Q. Where did Moses go when he was full fifteen years old?
Q. How near related is your aunty’s good-brother to you?
Q. How many holes are there in a hen’s doup?
A. There is one for the dung and another for the egg.
Q. Who is the best for catching of rogues?
Q. Where was the usefulest fair in Scotland kept?
Q. What sort of commodities were sold there?
A. Because those who went to it once would go to it no more.
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.
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.
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?