Donald, a British subject, but no Englishman. -- Opinion of
the greatest English Wit on the Scotch, and the worth of that
Opinion. -- The Wit of Donald and the Wit of the Cockney. --
Intelligence and Intellectuality. -- Donald's Exterior. --
Donald's Interior. -- Help yourself and Heaven will help you.
-- An Irish and a Scotch Servant facing a Difficulty. -- How a
small Scotchman may make himself useful in the Hour of Danger.
-- Characteristics. -- Donald on Train Journeys. -- One Way of
avoiding Tolls.
In the eyes of the French, the Scot is a British subject--in other
words, an Englishman--dressed in a Tam-o'-Shanter, a plaid, and kilt of
red and green tartan, and playing the bagpipes; for the rest, speaking
English, eating roast beef, and swearing by the Bible.
For that matter, many English people are pleased to entertain the same
illusions on the subject of the dwellers in the north of Great Britain.
Yet, never were two nations[A] so near on the map, and so far removed in
their ways and character.
[A] I mean "the people." As for the higher classes, their
manners and dress are perfectly English; they only differ
in their political and religious opinions.
The Scots English! Well, just advance that opinion in the presence of
one, and you will see how it will be received.
The Scotchman is a British subject; but if you take him for an
Englishman, he draws himself up, and says:
"No, Sir; I am not English. I am a Scotchman."
He is Scotch, and he intends to remain Scotch. He is proud of his
nationality, and I quite understand it.
Of all the inhabitants of the more-or-less-United Kingdom, Friend Donald
is the most keen, sturdy, matter-of-fact, persevering, industrious, and
witty.
The most witty! Now I have said something.
Yes, the most witty, with all due respect to the shade of Sydney Smith.
So little do the English know the Scotch, that when I spoke to them of
my intention to lecture in Scotland, they laughed at me.
"But don't you know, my dear fellow," they exclaimed, "that it is only
by means of a pickaxe that you can get a joke into the skull of a
Scotchman?"
And the fact is, that since the day when Sydney Smith, of jovial memory,
pronounced his famous dictum, that it required a surgical operation to
make a Scotchman understand a joke, poor Donald has been powerless to
prevent past and present generations from repeating the phrase of the
celebrated wit.
All in vain did Scotland produce Smollett, Robert Burns, Walter Scott,
and Thomas Carlyle, in the eyes of the English, the Scotchman has
remained the personification of slow-wittedness--a poor fellow incapable
of making much beyond prayers and money, and the Londoner who has never
travelled--the poor Cockney who still firmly believes that the French
are feeble creatures, living on snails and frogs--this Londoner, the
most stupid animal in the world (after the Paris _badaud_, perhaps),
goes about repeating to all who will listen to such nonsense:
"Dull and heavy as a Scotchman!"
Give a few minutes' start to a hoax, and you will never be able to
overtake it.
To tell the truth, the wit of, I will not say, an Englishman, but a
Cockney, is not within the reach of the Scot. Jokes, play upon words,
and bantering are not in his line. A pun will floor him completely; but
I hope to be able to prove, by means of a few anecdotes, that Donald has
real wit, and humour above all--humour of the light, subtle kind, that
would pass by a Cockney without making the least impression.
I do not wish to say that there is more intelligence in Scotland than in
England; but I can in all security say there is more intellectuality.
The Cockney must have his puns and small jokes. On the stage, he
delights in jigs; and to really please him, the best of actors have to
become rivals of the mountebanks at a fair. A hornpipe delights his
heart. An actor who, for an hour together, pretends not to be able to
keep on his hat, sends him into the seventh heaven of delight; and I
have seen the tenants of the stalls applaud these things. Such
performances make the Scotch smile, but with pity. The Cockney! When you
have said that you have said everything: it is a being who will find
fault with the opera of _Faust_, because up to the present time no
manager has given the Kermess scene the attraction of an acrobat turning
a wheel or standing on his head.
No, no; the Scotchman has no wit of this sort. In the matter of wit, he
is an epicure, and only appreciates dainty food. A smart repartee will
tickle his sides agreeably; he understands _demi-mots_; he is
good-tempered, and can take a joke as well as see through one. His
quick-wittedness and the subtlety of his character make him full of
quaint remarks and funny and unexpected comparisons. He is a stranger to
affectation--that dangerous rock to the would-be wit; he is natural, and
is witty without trying to be a wit.
Yes, Donald is witty; but he possesses more solid qualities as well.
We will make acquaintance with his intellectual qualities presently.
As to his exterior--look at him: he is as strong as his own granite, and
cut out for work.
A head well planted on a pair of broad shoulders; a strong-knit, sinewy
frame; small, keen eyes; iron muscles; a hand that almost crushes your
own as he shakes it; and large flat feet that only advance cautiously
and after having tried the ground: such is Donald.
Needless to say that he generally lives to a good old age.
I never knew a Christian so confident of going to Paradise, or less
eager to set out.
* * * * *
Why does the Scotchman succeed everywhere? Why, in Australia, New
Zealand, and all the other British Colonies, do you find him landowner,
director of companies, at the head of enterprises of all kinds? Again,
why do you find in almost all the factories of Great Britain that the
foreman is Scotch?
Ah! it is very simple.
Success is very rarely due to extraordinary circumstances, or to chance,
as the social failures are fond of saying.
The Scot is economical, frugal, matter-of-fact, exact, thoroughly to be
depended upon, persevering, and hard-working.
He is an early riser; when he earns but half-a-crown a day, he puts by
sixpence or a shilling; he minds his own business, and does not meddle
with other people's.
Add to these qualities the body that I was speaking of--a body healthy,
bony, robust, and rendered impervious to fatigue by the practice of
every healthful exercise--and you will understand why the Scotch succeed
everywhere.
His religion teaches him to trust in God, and to rely upon his own
resources--an eminently practical religion, whose device is:
_Help yourself and Heaven will help you._
If a Scotchman were wrecked near an outlandish island in Oceania, I
guarantee that you will find him, a few years later, installed as a
landed proprietor, exacting rents and taxes from the natives.
Where the English, the Irish especially, will starve, the Scotch will
exist; where the English can exist, the Scotch will dine.
* * * * *
The following little scene, which took place in my house, enlightened me
very much as to why one finds the Scotch farming their own land in the
colonies, while the Irish are doing labourers' work.
I had an Irish cook, an honest woman if ever there was one, faithful,
and of a religion as sincere as it was unpractical.
The housemaid, a true-born Scotch girl, came down one morning to find
the poor cook on her knees in the act of imploring Heaven to make her
fire burn.
"But your wood is damp," she exclaimed; "how can ye expect it to burn?
Pray, if ye will, but the Lord has a muckle to mind; and ye'd do weel to
pit your wood in the oven o' nights, instead of bothering Him wi' such
trifles."
"It was faith, nevertheless," said a worthy lady, to whom I told the
matter.
It was idleness, thought I, or very much like it.
Doctor Norman Macleod tells how he was once in a boat, on a Highland
lake, when a storm came on, which menaced him and his companions with
the most serious danger. The doctor, a tall, strong man, had with him a
Scotch minister, who was small and delicate. The latter addressed
himself to the boatman, and, drawing his attention to the danger they
were in, proposed that they should all pray.
"Na, na," said the boatman; "let the little ane gang to pray, but first
the big ane maun tak' an oar, or we shall be drouned."
* * * * *
Donald is the most practical man on earth.
He is a man who takes life seriously, and whom nothing will divert from
the road that leads to the goal.
He is a man who monopolises all the good places in this world and the
next; who keeps the Commandments, and everything else worth keeping; who
swears by the Bible--and as hard[B] as a Norman carter; who serves God
every Sabbath day and Mammon all the week; who has a talent for keeping
a great many things, it is true, but especially his word, when he gives
it you.
[B] I trust to the intelligence of the reader to distinguish
here between the well-bred Scot and his humbler brethren.
He is not a man of brilliant qualities, but he is a man of solid ones,
who can only be appreciated at his true worth when you have known him
some time. He does not jump at you with demonstrations of love, nor does
he swear you an eternal friendship; but if you know how to win his
esteem, you may rely upon him thoroughly.
He is a man who pays prompt cash, but will have the value of his money.
If ever you travel with a Scotchman from Edinburgh to London, you may
observe that he does not take his eyes off the country the train goes
through. He looks out of the window all the time, so as not to miss a
pennyworth of the money he has paid for his place. Remark to him, as you
yawn and stretch yourself, that it's a long, tiring, tiresome journey,
and he will probably exclaim:
"Long, indeed, long! I should think so, sir; and so it ought to be for
L2 17s. 6d.!"
* * * * *
I know of a Scot, who, rather than pay the toll of a bridge in
Australia, takes off his coat, which he rolls and straps on his back,
in order to swim across the stream.
He is not a miser; on the contrary, his generosity is well known in his
own neighbourhood. He is simply an eccentric Scot, who does not see why
he should pay for crossing a river that he can cross for nothing.