# John Falkirk's Cariches (1850s)/John Falkirk's Cariches

John Falkirk’s
Cariches.
Q. What is the wisest behaviour of of ignorant persons?
A. To speak of nothing but what they know, and to give their opinion of nothing but what they understand.
Q. What time is a scolding wife at the best?
A. When she is fast asleep.
Q. What time is a scolding wife at the worst?
A. When she is that wicked as to tear the hair out of her head, when she can’t get at her neighbours, and thro’ perfect spite bites her own tongue with her own teeth.—My hearty wish is, that all such wicked vipers may ever do so.
​Q What is the most effectual cure and infallible remedy for a scolding wife?
A. The only cure is to get out of the hearing of her: but the infallible remedy is to nail her tongue to a growing tree, in the beginning of a cold winter-night, and so let it stand till sun-rising next morning, then she’ll become one of the peaceblest women that ever lay by a man’s side.
Q. What time of the year is it that there are most holes open?
A. In harvest when there are stubbles.
Q. What times is a cow heaviest?
A. When the bull’s on her back.
Q. Who was the goodman’s muckle cow’s calf‘s mother?
A. The muckle cow herself.
Q. What is the likeliest thing to a man on a horse?
A. A Tailor on a mare.
​Q. What is the hardest dinner that ever a Tailor laid his teeth to?
A: His own goose, tho’ ever so well boiled or roasted.
Q. How many toads’ tails will it take to reach up to the moon?
A. One, if it be long enough.
Q. How many sticks gangs to the bigging of a craw’s nest?
A. None, for they are all carried.
Q. How many whites will a well made pudding-prick need?
A: When well made it will need no more.
Q. Who was the father of Zebedee’s children?
A. Zebedee himself.
Q. Where did Moses go when he was full fifteen years old?
A. Into his sixteenth.
Q. How near related is your aunty’s good-brother to you?
A. He is my father.
Q. How many holes are there in a hen’s doup?
A. Two.
Q. How prove you that?
​A. There is one for the dung and another for the egg.
Q. What is the best method of catching rogues?
A. There is none so fit as a rogue himself.
Q. Where was the usefulest fair in Scotland kept?
A. At Mullgay.
Q. What sort of commodities were there?
A. Nothing but ale and wicked wives.
Q. How was it abolished?
A. Because those that went to it once would go to it no more.
Q. For what reason?
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 another for her, with two as bad.
Q. What was the reason, that in those days a man could put away his wife for pissing the bed, but not for s——g it?
A. because he could shut it away with his foot and lie 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 no more thought of than for man to ride a 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 puts away, and lies down with whom he pleases.
Q. How will one know the bairns of our town, by all others in the kingdom?
A. By their ill-breeding, and bad manners.
Q. What is 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 ’ll tell you to follow your nose, and if you go wrong, curse the gude.
​Q, Are young and old of them alike for ill breeding?
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 bid you kiss his father’s a—e and then you’ll ken.
Q. What sort of creatures is kindliest when they meet?
A. None can exceed the kindness of dogs when they meet in a market.
Q. And what is collie’s conduct when there.
A. First, they kiss other’s mouths and noses, smell all about, and last of all, they are so kind as to kiss other below the tail.
Q. What is the coldest part of a dog?
A. His nose.
Q. What is the coldest part of a man?
A. His knees.
Q. What is the coldest part of a woman?
A. Her back.
Q. What is the reason that these three parts of men, women, and dogs are coldest?
​A. Fabulous Historian says, that there was three little holes in Noah’s Ark; and that the dog stopt his nose in one, and the man put his knee in another, and into the third and biggest hole, the woman bang’d her backside: and these parts being exposed to the cold blast, makes them always cold ever since.
Q. What remedy does the man take for warming his cold knees?
A. He holds them towards the fire; and when in bed, draws his shirt down over them.
Q. What does the woman do, to warm their cold parts?
A. The married women put their backside into their husbands’ arms:—Virgins, and those going mad for marriage, their maidenhead keeps them warm:—old matrons, and whirl’d-o’er maidens, and widows bewitched, hold their coldest parts to the fire.
Q. And what remedy does the poor dog take, for his cold nose?
He staps it below his tail, the hotest bit in his body.
​Q. What is the reason the dogs are worse on chapmen than on any other strangers?
A. It is said, the dogs have three accusations against the chapmen, which has been handed down from father to son, or from one generation of dogs to another: the first is as as old as Æsop, the great wit of Babylon.—The dogs having a law-suit against the cats, they gained the plea; one of the dogs coming trudging home with the Decreet below his tail, a wicked chapman threw his elwan at him, and he let the Decreet fall, and so lost their great pivileges thereby. The second is, Because in old times the Chapman used to buy dogs and kill them for their skins. The third is, when a chapman was quartered in a farmer’s house, that night the Dog lost his right of licking the pot.
Q. What creature resembles most a drunken piper?
A. A Cat when she sips milk, she always sings, and so does a piper when he drinks good ale.
​Q. What is the reason a dog runs twice round about before the lie down to rest him?
A. Because he does not know the head of his bed from the foot of it.
Q. What creature resembles most a long, lean, ill-looking, greasy-faced lady, for pride?
A. None so much as a cat, who is continually spitting in her lufe and rubbing her face, as many such ladies do the brown leather of their wrinkled chafts.
Q. Amongst what sort of creatures will you observe most of a natural law or instinctive knowledge?
A. The hart and the hind meet on one certain day in the year; the broad goose lays her first egg on Easterns Even, old stile; the crows begin to build their nests about the first of March, old stile; the swans observe matrimony, and if the female hie, the male dare not take up with another or the rest will put him to death; all the birds in general join in pairs and ​keep so; but the dove resembles the adulterer, when the hen grows old he pays her away and takes another; the locusts observe military order, and march in bands; the frogs resemble pipers and pedlars, for the young ones ride the old ones to death.
Q. Who are the merriest & heartiest people in the world?
A. The sailors, for they’ll be singing, cursing, and damning one another when the waves, their graves, are going over their heads.
Q. Which are the disorderliest creatures in battle?
A. Cows and dogs, for they all fall on them that are neathmost.
Q. What are the vainest sort of people in the world?
A. A barber, a tailor, a young soldier, and a poor dominie.
Q. What is the great cause of the barber’s vanity?
A. Because he is admitted to trim ​Noblemen’s chafts, thake their sculls, take Kings by the nose, and hold a razor to their very throats, which no subject else dare presume to do.
Q. What is the great cause of the Tailor’s pride?
A. His making of people’s new clothes, of which every person, young and old, is proud. Then, who can walk in a vainer shew than a Tailor carrying home a gentleman‘s new clothes?
Q. What is the cause of a young Soldier’s pride?
A. When he lists, he thinks he is free of his mother‘s correction, the hard usage of a bad master, his liberty to curse, swear, whore, and do everything, until he be convinced by four halberts and the drummer’s whip that he has now got both a military and civil law above his head, and, perhaps, far worse masters then ever.
Q. What is the cause of the poor Dominie‘s pride?
A. As he is the teacher of the young ​and ignorant, he supposes no man knows what he knows; and because boys call him master, therefore he thinks himself a great man.
Q. What song is it that is sung without a tongue, and yet its notes are understood by people of all nations?
A. It is a fart, which every one knows the sound of.
Q. What is the reason that young people are vain, giddy-headed and airy, and not so humble and obedient as the children of former years?
A. Because they are brought up and educated after a more haughty strain, by reading Fables, Plays, Novels and Romances; Gospel-Books, such as the Psalm-Book, Proverbs and Catechisms, are like old Almanacks; there is nothing in vogue but Fiddle, Flute, Troy and Babylonish tunes; our plain English speech corrupted with beauish cants, such as don’t, won’t, nen and ken; a jargon worse than the Yorkshire dialect or the Hottentote gibberish.
​Q. Why is swearing become so common among Scotch people?
A. Because so many lofty teachers come from the south amongst us, where swearing is practised in its true grammatical perfection! Hot oath, new struck, with as bright a lustre as a new quarter guinea, just come from the Mint.
Q. How will you know the bones of a mason’s mare at the back of a dyke, amongst the bones of a hundred dead horses lying in the same place?
A. Because it is made of wood.
Q. Which are the two things not to be spared, but not abused?
A. A soldiers coat and a hired horse.
Q. How is a man in debt like a nobleman?
A. Because he has many to wait on and call for him.
Q. How is swearing like a shabby coat?
A. Because it is a bad habit.
Q. How is bad pen liked a wicked and profligate man?
​A. Because it wants mending,
Q. Why is a church bell like a story that is handed about?
A. Because it is often toll’d.
Q. What is a man like that is in the midst of a river and cannot swim?
A. He is like to be drowned.
Q. Why is a drawn tooth like a thing that is forgot?
A. Because it is out of one’s head.
Q. How is a book like a tree?
A. Because it is full of leaves.
Q. How is a good sermon like a plump pudding?
A. Because there is reasons in it.
Q. How is a whorish woman like a charitable person?
A. Because she brings her husband to a piece of bread.
Q. How is a lawyer like a contentious woman?
A. Because he breeds wrangling and jangling.
Q. Who is the greatest fool in the world?
A. A whore; for she hazards soul and body for a miserable livelihood.
​Q Who are the two greatest thieves in Great Britain?
A. Tea and Tobacco, for they pick the pockets of the whole nation.
Q. What is the difference between Ale-drapers, and Linen drapers?
A. Only this, the one cheats you with froth, and the other with cloth.
Q. If Extortioners cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, where will Usurers, Tallymen, and Pawn-brokers go.
A. The same road with Extortioners.
Q. What is the consequence of immoderate gaming?
A. By cards and dice, a man is ruin’d in a trice; for gaming and whoring often hang together.
Q. What employments are likest to one another?
A. Soldiers and Butchers are bloody near relations, for the both live by slaughtering and killing.
Q. What are the two hardest things to be found, and yet they are both good in their kind?
A. Good women, & good small beer.
Q. Who is the likest to a Boatman?
A. An hypocrite, who always looks one way and rows another, in all his transactions.
​O. What are the five greatest rarities to be found in the world?
A. A black Swan, a Phœnix, an Unicorn, the Philosophers’ Stone, and a maiden at sixteen.
Q. What is the greatest folly that sensible people can be guilty of?
A. To go to law about trifles, for, whatever way the plea end, the lawyers will be the greatest gainers.
Q. Who has the honestest trade in the world?
A. Ballad-singers; for they always deal with ready-money: and it is as ancient as the Siege of Troy, for Homer was a ballad-singer.
Q. What is the surest method for one to become both rich and respectable?
A. To be sober and industrious.
Q. What is the best method of overcoming the argument of a positive person?
A. Either to say with him, or give him no answer.
Q. What is the wisest course to be followed by a man who has a brawling and scolding wife?
A. To keep silent, and then she’ll bite her own fingers with anger.
End of the Cariches.