y, for instance,
suppose it to have flowed on that eventful night so joyously described
by Burns:--

"The souter tauld his queerest stories,
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus."

Or we may think of the delight it gave the good Mr. Balwhidder, when he
tells, in his Annals of the Parish, of some such story, that it was a
"jocosity that was just a kittle to hear." When I speak of changes in
such Scottish humour which have taken place, I refer to a particular
sort of humour, and I speak of the sort of feeling that belongs to
Scottish pleasantry,--which is sly, and cheery, and pawky. It is
undoubtedly a humour that depends a good deal upon the vehicle in which
the story is conveyed. If, as we have said, our quaint dialect is
passing away, and our national eccentric points of character, we must
expect to find much of the peculiar humour allied with them to have
passed away also. In other departments of wit and repartee, and acute
hits at men and things, Scotsmen (whatever Sydney Smith may have said to
the contrary) are equal to their neighbours, and, so far as I know, may
have gained rather than lost. But this peculiar humour of which I now
speak has not, in our day, the scope and development which were
permitted to it by the former generation. Where the tendency exists, the
exercise of it is kept down by the usages and feelings of society. For
examples of it (in its full force at any rate) we must go back to a race
who are departed. One remark, however, has occurred to me in regard to
the specimens we have of this kind of humour--viz. that they do not
always proceed from the personal wit or cleverness of any of the
individuals concerned in them. The amusement comes from the
circumstances, from the concurrence or combination of the ideas, and in
many cases from the mere expressions which describe the facts. The
humour of the narrative is unquestionable, and yet no one has tried to
be humorous. In short, it is the _Scottishness_ that gives the zest. The
same ideas differently expounded might have no point at all. There is,
for example, something highly original in the notions of celestial
mechanics entertained by an honest Scottish Fife lass regarding the
theory of comets. Having occasion to go out after dark, and having
observed the brilliant comet then visible (1858), she ran in with
breathless haste to the house, calling on her fellow-servants to "Come
oot and see a new star that hasna got its tail cuttit aff