I once heard there was a vaudeville comedian who did a routine on a cheap Scotsman that was responsible for a widespread and incorrect perception of all Scots as being cheap.
Google has not willingly yielded information on this - if anything it supports the perception as being of much longer standing; does any one here know if this vaudevillian story is true or not and (bonus points) if true what was the comedian’s name?
No idea who the vaudvillean was, but the stereotype of Scottish [del]miserliness[/del]thriftiness goes way back, based on the fact that for a long time Scotland was dirt-poor. It’s similar to the way the English used to make fun of the Scottish for eating oatmeal (which the English regarded as animal fodder), when it was a sensible adaptation to the cold, wet, short growing season in Scotland.
No McTavish
Was ever lavish.
~~Ogden Nash
The music hall performer was likely to have been Harry Lauder, who had the catchphrase “Bang goes sixpence!”, but that was probably based on the punchline to a cartoon in Punch magazine from 1868, so it was older than him – and the stereotype’s even older.
Q: What is the difference between a Scotsman and a canoe?
A: A canoe tips!
Old joke, but I first saw that in a 9th grade English textbook! I have no idea about the relevance to the lesson anymore, presumably how words can have widely varying meanings.
I married a thrifty Scotsman. His father was a thrifty Scot, as were his grandfather and grandmother. His sister is very thrifty as well. It may just be a trait of this particular family, but they are thrifty to the point of being miserly.
All hold professional degrees and make/made very good money, so it wasn’t that money was hard to come by, they just didn’t like giving away more than they had to.
Lauder carefully cultivated the image of the Scotsman who is ‘careful’ with money, even in his daily life. It certainly made him wealthy and successful, but many Scots remain ambivalent about the image of Scotland which he gave the world. His act was popular in Canada, where there were many Scots immigrants at the time.
That heritage of extreme poverty and bad agricultural conditions just generally has left its mark on the Scots in the form a sort of proud hardiness - bordering on hardness. Their national self-image, whatever that’s worth, is of a people who disdain creature comforts and prefer to take things a bit raw.
The Irish, historically, have been even poorer than the Scots, but have STILL told all the same jokes about penny-pinching Scotsmen.
I seem to recall from school that there was a rather subtle joke in Shapespeare’s Macbeth alluding to the cheapness of Scotsmen. So this would have been a common stereotype since at least 1606 – 403 years ago.
My understanding is that the English were blockading the Scots in an attempt to starve them into submission, and the Scots took to stealing oats from the English stables and cooking them up, and that’s how oatmeal was invented. Not sure of the veracity of the tale, but there you go.
I’d always heard that one about Canadians.
Interestingly, my maternal grandmother, who was of Scottish descent, tended to use the word “Scotch” to describe somebody who was pathologically [del]cheap[/del] thrifty, like her sister. (It was always interesting to me that both of them grew up during the Great Depression, in the same family, and came out of it with distinctly different views on handling money. Both were careful with their money; in my grandmother it manifested as careful management of savings and smart investments, but in her sister it came out as over-the-top penny pinching, like keeping her house uncomfortably cold in the winter simply because she wouldn’t turn up the thermostat (and then moaning about how cold she was). Both were college educated and worked in the same profession (teaching), so it’s not like my great aunt was markedly poorer than my grandmother.)
It seems unlikely.
First, oats in a stable would normally be the raw whole grain. It has to be processed (rolled, ground, or cut) to produce the oats or oatmeal that humans eat.
Second, that is certainly not the invention of oatmeal. That was recorded as a human food long before – it was a common meal of Greek soldiers in Trojan War times.
“If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.”
"Scotch is a drink; Scots are a people. But we’re both great-tasting! "
The Scots are so tight a few of the competitors in last year’s highland games refused to let go of the caber.
Having lived amongst them (and with them ;)) for years, the stereotype isn’t that far wide of the mark, especially if they’re from Aberdeen :p.
A Scottish friend of mine once told me that the jokes originally were directed at Aberdonians (he’s from Aberdeen himself) from a Glasgow point of view. When they travelled south the English reasoned that if Aberdonians are thrifty and Aberdeen is in Scotland then all Scotsmen must be thrifty.
A number of years ago the Swedish State Railway Company had a campaign that two people could go for the same price as one, illustrated with two Scotsmen. A Scottish expat immediately complained about it on the grounds that it was degrading and eventually the company changed their advertising. Another Scotsman, however, informed me that that particular person was so mean he usually had tears in his eyes when he came out of the toilet.
Apart from that my own assessment of Scotsmen is that they are usually far too generous for their own good.
Yup, Aberdonians are notoriously tight. They are also the source of most of the sheep-shagging stuff.
According to John Prebble’s book Culloden (I read it 20 years ago so this is IIRC), it first came about after the battle of Culloden in 1746. The battle was devastating to the highland economy, because in its aftermath the Duke of Cumberland (the victorious general) let his troops go on a confiscating spree. They ransacked the houses and stole the livestock and basically took anything portable and of value, which left the population dirt-poor.
Anyway the Inverness garrison were the ones Prebble credits (if that’s the word) with originating the Scottish joke, since they thought it was great fun making meanness jokes about the penniless townspeople.
Eh, no, the source of the sheep shagging stuff is stupid people from the central belt who think that people who live in a city of 200 000 people are crofters. These same people also overlook the fact that Glasgow is closer to the real Highlands than Aberdeen is.
I can’t contribute to the main point of the thread, but I can share an anecdote of using this stereotype to one’s advantage.
A number of years ago we were on a coach tour through England, Wales and Scotland (not my preferred mode of travel, but I digress). On the bus were two young ladies who had recently graduated college (one from Australia, one from New Zealand), doing their see-the-world thing before gaining employment.
Anyway, after spending the night in Edinburgh, they told of having a wonderful time, and not paying for any drinks. They would simply strike up conversation in the pub, talk about where they were from, and casually mention the stereotype in their homeland about the penny-pinching Scot. It would seem that young men became very eager to disprove that particular stereotype, and drinks ensued.