# John Falkirk's Cariches (1840s)/John Falkirk's Cariches

JOHN FALKIRK'S
CARICHES.
Question, What is the wisest behaviour of ignorant persons?
Answer, To speak of nothing but what they know, and to give their opinion of nothing but what they thoroughly understand.
Ques. What time is it when a scolding wife is at her best?
Ans. 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 cannot get at her neighbours, and through 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 infalible 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 peaceablest 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 time is a cow heaviest?
A. When the bull's on her back.
Q. Who was the goodman's muckle cow calf's mother
A. The muckle cow herself.
Q. What is the likeliest thing to a horse?
A. A Tailor on a mare.
Q. What is the hardest dinner that ever 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 site for the 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 sh--g it?
A. Because he could push 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 the for 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 lie 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, they'll tell you to follow your nose, and if you go wrong, curse the guide.
​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 this father, he'll bid you kiss his father's arse and then you'll ken.
Q. What sort of creatures are 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 each 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 backside.
Q. What is the reason that these three parts of men, women, and dogs are coldest?
A. Fabulous Historians, says, that there were 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, is the cause which makes them cold ever since.
Q. What remedy does the man take for to warm his cold knees?
A. He holds them towards the fire; and and when in bed, draws his shirt down over them.
Q. What does the women do, to warm their cold part.
A. The married women put their backsides 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?
A. He staps it below his tail, the hotest bit in his body.
Q. What is the reason the dogs are worst on chapmen than on any other strangers?
A. It is said, the dogs have three accusations against the chapman, which has been handed down from father to son, or from one generation of dogs to another: the first is as old as Æsop, the great wit of Babylon. The dogs having a lawsuit aganst the cats, they gained the plea: coming trudging home with the Deereet below his tail, a wicked chapman threw ​is ell-wan at him, and he let the Deereet full and so lost their great privileges thereby. The second is, because in old times the chapmen used to buy dogs and kill them for their skins. The third reason is, when a chapman was quartered at a farmer's house, that night the Dog lost his right of licking the po
Q. What creature resembles most a drunken Piper?
A. A Cat when she sips milk, for then she always sings, and so does a piper when he drinks good ale.
Q. What is the reason a dog runs twice round before he lies down?
A. Because he does not know the head of his bed from the foot of it.
Q. What creature resembles most a long dean, ill-looking greasy-faced lady, for pride?
A. None so much as a cat, who is continually spitting in her lufe and rubing her face, as many such ladies do the brown leather of their wrinkled shafts.
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 Brood Goose, lays her first egg on Eastern's Even, old stile; the Crows ​begin to build their nest about the first of March old stile; the Swans, observe matrimony,and if a female die, the male dare not take up other 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 puts her away and takes another; the Locusts observe military order, and march in bands; the Frogs resembles gipsies and pedlers, for the young ones ride the old ones to death.
Q. Who are the merriest and heartiest people in the world?
A. The Sailors, for they'll be singing and cursing and daming 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 other subject dare presume to do.
Q. What is the great cause of the Tailor's pride?
A. His making of peoples new clothes, of which every person, young and old is proud. Then who can walk in a vainer show 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 motlier's correction, the hard usage of a bad master, his liberty to curse, swear, whore, and do every thing, until he be convinced by four halberts and the drummer's whip, that he has now got both a civil and military law above his head, and, perhaps, far worse masters than 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 every one knows the sound of.
Q. What is the reason that young people are ​vain, giddy-headed and airy, and not so 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, fute, Troy and Babylonish tunes; our plain English speech is corrupted with beauish eants, such as dont, wont, nen, and ken; a jargon worse than the Yorkshire dialect or the Hottentot gibberish.
Q. Why is swearing become so common among Scotch people?
A. Because so many lofty teachers came from the south amongst us, where swearing is practised in its true grammatical perfection! Hot oaths, new struck, hath 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. What are the two things not to be spared, but not to be abused?
A. A soldier's 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 on him.
Q. How is swearing like a shabby coat?
A. Because it is a bad habit.
Q. How is a bad pen like a wicked and progate man?
A. Because it wants mending.
Q. Why is a church bell like a story that is funded about?
A. Because it is often toll'd.
Q. What is a man like that is in the midst of 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. Why is a book like a tree?
A. Because it is full of leaves.
Q. Why 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 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 or a miserable livelihood.
Q. Who are the two greatest thieves im 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 they 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, and 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.
Q. What are the five greatest rarities to be found in the world?
A. A black Swan, a Phoenix, 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.
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.
​Q. What thing is that which is lengthened by being cut at both ends? A. A Ditch.
Q. What is that which was born without a soul, lived and had a soul, yet died without a soul.
A. The whale that swallowed Jona.
Q. What is the longest and the shortest thing in the world? the swiftest and the slowest? the most indivisible and the most extended? the least valued and the most regretted? without which nothing can be done? which devours all that is small, yet gives life and spirit to all that is great?
A. Time.
What creatures are those which appear closely connected, yet upon examination are found to be three distinct bodies, with eight legs, five on one side, and three on the other; three mouths, two straight forwards, and the third on one side; six eyes, four on one side, two on the other; six ears, four on one side, and two on the other?
A. A Man and Woman on horseback.
Q. Why is a churchyard like an inn?
A. Because it receives weary travellers.
Why is a carrotty lady like a troop of soldiers.
A. Because she bears fire-locks.
Q. What did Adam first set in the garden of Eden? A. His foot.
​Q. How is it that a clergyman's horse is like a King?
A. Because he is guided by a minister.
Q. What is title difference between a boiled sheep's, head and a sheep's head boiled?
A. In the first the sheep is boiled and in the last the head is boiled.
Q. What kind of snuff is that, the more that is taken the fuller the box is?
A. It is the snuff off the candle.
Q. What relation is that child to its own father who is not its father own son?
A. Surely his daughter.
Q. What is that which is often brought to table, always cut, but never eaten?
A. A pack of cards.
Q. Where was Peter when his candle went out? A. He was in the dark.
Q. What relation is your uncle's brother to you who is not your uncle?
A. He must be your father.
Q. What difference is there between twice five and twenty and twice twenty five?
A. The former is 30, the later is 50-
Q. Why is a brewer's horse like a tap-ster?
A. Because they draw drafts of drink.