“Indeed, it’s just as little to me whar ye’re gaen.”  A friend has told me of an answer highly characteristic of this dry and unconcerned quality which he heard given to a fellow-traveller.  A gentleman sitting opposite to him in the stage-coach at Berwick complained bitterly that the cushion on which he sat was quite wet.  On looking up to the roof he saw a hole through which the rain descended copiously, and at once accounted for the mischief.  He called for the coachman, and in great wrath reproached him with the evil under which he suffered, and pointed to the hole which was the cause of it.  All the satisfaction, however, that he got was the quiet unmoved reply, “Ay, mony a ane has complained o’ that hole.”  Another anecdote I heard from a gentleman who vouched for the truth, which is just a case where the narrative has its humour not from the wit which is displayed but from that dry matter-of-fact view of things peculiar to some of our countrymen.  The friend of my informant was walking in a street of Perth, when, to his horror, he saw a workman fall from a roof where he was mending slates, right upon the pavement.  By extraordinary good fortune he was not killed, and on the gentleman going up to his assistance, and exclaiming, with much excitement, “God bless me, are you much hurt?” all the answer he got was the cool rejoinder, “On the contrary, sir.”  A similar matter-of fact answer was made by one of the old race of Montrose humorists.  He was coming out of church, and in the press of the kirk skailing, a young man thoughtlessly trod on the old gentleman’s toe, which was tender with corns.  He hastened to apologise, saying, “I am very sorry, sir; I beg your pardon.”  The only acknowledgment of which was the dry answer, “And ye’ve as muckle need, sir.”  An old man marrying a very young wife, his friends rallied him on the inequality of their ages.  “She will be near me,” he replied, “to close my een.”  “Weel,” remarked another of the party, “I’ve had twa wives, and they opened my een.”

One of the best specimens of cool Scottish matter-of-fact view of things has been supplied by a kind correspondent, who narrates it from his own personal recollection.

The back windows of the house where he was brought up looked upon the Greyfriars Church that was burnt down.  On the Sunday morning in which that event took place, as they were all preparing to go to church, the flames began to burst forth; the young people screamed from the back part of the house, “A fire!  A fire!” and all was in a state of confusion and alarm.  The housemaid was not at home, it being her turn for the Sunday “out.”  Kitty, the cook, was taking her place, and performing her duties.  The old woman was always very particular on the subject of her responsibility on such occasions, and came panting and hobbling up stairs from the lower regions, and exclaimed, “Oh, what is’t, what is’t?” “O Kitty, look here, the Greyfriars Church is on fire!” “Is that a’, Miss?  What a fricht ye geed me!  I thought ye said the parlour fire was out.”