# The Scots Piper's Queries, or, John Falkirk's Carriches (1790s)/The Scots Piper's Queries

The Scots Piper's Queries, &c.
Q.WHAT is the wisest behaviour 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 neighbour's, and thro' perfect spite bites her tongue with her own teeth: my hearty wish is, that all such wicked vipers may ever do so.
Q. What is the 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, she'll become one 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 most stubbles.
Q. At what time is the cow heaviest?
A. When the bull is on her back.
Q. Who was the goodman's muckle cow's calf's mother.
A. None but the muckle cow herherself.
Q. What is the likest thing to a man and a horse?
A. A tailor on a mare's back.
Q What is the hardest dinner that a tailor ever laid his teeth on?
A His own goose, though never so well boiled and roasted.
Q. How many tods tails will it take to reach 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. If it be well made it needs no more.
Q Who was the father of Zebedee's children?
A. Who but himself.
Q. Where did Moses go when he was full fifteen years old?
A. Into his sixteenth.
Q. How near related is your aunt's good-brother to you?
A. No nearer than my own 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. Who is the best for catching rogues?
A. None so fit as a rogue himelf.
Q. Where was the usefulest fair in Scotland kept?A. At Mulguy
Q. What sort of commodities were there?
​A Nothing but ale and ill 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 his wife for one fault, got another 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 lye down.
Q. What is the reason now a days that men court, cast, marry, and re-marry so many wives, and keep but only one in public at last?
A. Because private marriages are become as common as smuggling, and cuckolding the kirk no more thought of than to ride a mile or two on 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 town by others in the kingdom?
A. By their ill breeding and bad manners
Q. What is their behaviour?
A. If you ask them a question in civility, if were but the road to the next town, they will tell you to follow your nose, and if go wrong curse the guide.
Q. Are young and old of them no better?
A, All the odds lies in the difference, for if you ask a child to whom he belongs, or who is his father, he will tell you to kiss his father's a—e.
Q. What kind 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 colleys conduct there?
A. First they kiss others mouths and noses, smell about, and at 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. The back part of her body.
Q. What's the reason that these three parts of men, women and dogs are coldest?
A. Fabulous historians write, that there was three little holes broke in Noah's ark, and that the dog put his nose in one, and another the man put his knee in it, a third and biggest hole broke, and the woman set her backside into it; and these parts being exposed to the cold blast, makes them always cold ever since.
Q And what remedy does the man take to warm his knees?
A. He holds them towards the fire, and when in bed draws his shirt over them.
Q. What does the woman do to warm their cold parts?
A. The married women turn their backside about to the goodman's belly; virgins, and those mad for mar​riage, the heat of their maiden-heads keeps them warm; old matrons and whirl'd o'er maidens, widows, and widows bewitched, hold up their cold parts to the fire.
Q. And what remedy does the poor dog take for his cold nose?
A. Staps it in below his tail, the hottest bit in his body.
Q. What is the reason that dogs are worse on chapmen, than on any other strange people?
A. It is said the dogs have three accusations against the chapmen, 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 dog having a law-suit against the cat, gained the plea, and coming trudging home with the decreet below his tail, a wicked chapman throwing his elwand at him, he let it fall, and so lost his privileges. The second is because in old times the chapmen 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 property, the licking of 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 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, lean, ill-looking, greasy fac'd lady for pride?
A. None so much as a cat, who is continually spitting in her lufe and rubbing her face, as many of such ladies do their brown leather.
Q. Amongst what sort of creatures will you observe most of a natural law?
A. The hare and the hind meet at one certain day in the year; the broad goose lays her first egg on Fastern's Even, old stile; the crows begin to build their nests the first of March, old stile; the swans observe matrimony and if the female die, 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 adulderer, for when the she one turns old, he pays her away and takes another; the locusts observe military order and march in bands; the frogs resemble pipers and preachers, for the young ride the old to death.
Q. Who are the merriest and heartiest people in the world?
A. The sailors, for they'll be singing and cursing 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 upon them that are neathmost.
Q. Who are the vainest sort of people in the world?
A. A barber, a tailor, a young soldier and poor dominie
Q. What is the great cause of the barber's vanity?
A. His being admitted to trim noblemens chasts, thyke their sculls, take kings by the nose, and hold a razor to ​to his very throat, which no subject else dare 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, are proud of, then who can walk vainer than a tailor carrying home a gentleman's clothes.
Q. What is the cause of a young soldier's pride?
A. When he lists, he is free from his mother's correction, and the hard usage of a bad master, has liberty to curse, swear, whore, and every other thing, until convinc'd by four halberts and the drummer's whip, that he has now got a military and civil law above his head, and perhaps 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 the boys call him master, therefore he thinks himself a great man.
Q. What sort of a song is it is that ​sung without a tongue and its notes are understood by people of all nations
A. It is a fart, which every body knows to be but wind.
Q. What is the reason that young people are vain, giddy-headed and airy, and not so humble as in former times?
A. Because they are brought up and educated after a more haughty strain, by reading fables, plays and romances, gospel books, such as the psalm book, proverbs and catechisms are like old almanacks: Nothing is now in vogue, but fiddle, flute, Tory and Babylonish tunes; our plain English speech corrupted with beauish cants, don't, won't, nen, and ken, a jargon worse than the Yorkshire dialect.
Q. Why is swearing become o common amongst the Scots people?
A Because so many lofty teachers come from the south among us, where swearing is practised in its true grammatical perfection, hot oaths, new struck off, with as bright a lustre as a new quarter guinea.
Q How will you know the bones ​of a mason's mare at the back of a dyke, amongst the bones of an hundred dead horse?
A. Because they are made of wood.
Q. Which are the two things not to be spared, and not to be abused?
A. A soldier's coat and a hired horse.
The end of John Falkirk's Carriches.