ABSTRACT
The Scots and the Jews have indeed shown a remarkable zeal in creating and circulating comic tales about their own people, many of which seem to mock traits and characteristics such as canniness which others may see as not entirely desirable. Indeed, it is striking how jokes about the Scots have flourished most, when there has been least hostility between the Scots and their neighbours. This image of the Scots in general and of Scottish intellectuals and ministers in particular was forcefully refuted in the period between 1850 and 1950, the golden age of the Scottish joke book, when distinguished Scotsmen vied with one another in the production of collections of Scottish jokes and humorous anecdotes. Many of the scripts of the jokes and anecdotes in these collections could be read as based on and even expressions of a derogatory stereotype of the canny, thrifty, shrewd, grasping, pawky, dram-drinking, fanatically Calvinist and Sabbatarian Scot.
