The northern Attic salt abounds in one savour that appears in a hundred stories like that of the preacher who, at Kirkcaldy or elsewhere, apologised for his want of preparation: “I have been obliged to say what the Lord put into my mouth, but next Sabbath I hope to come better provided!” If there is any subject which the Scot takes seriously it is religion, that yet makes the favourite theme of his jests. Revilers have gone so far as to state that the incongruous elements of Scottish humour are usually supplied by a minister and a whisky bottle. It is certainly the case that a Scotsman relishes playing upon the edge of sacred things, and that the pillars of his church will shake their sides over stories which strike Englishmen as irreverent. But has not vigorous faith often shown a tendency to overflow into backwaters of comicality, as in the gargoyles of our cathedrals, the mediæval parodies of church rites, and the homely wit of Puritan preachers? There are some believers who can afford a laugh now and then at their sturdy solemnities, others who must keep hush lest a titter bring down their fane like a house of cards. Familiarity with the language of the Bible counts for a good deal in what seems the too free handling of it in the north. But note how the irreverence of the Scot’s humour is usefully directed against his own tendency to fanaticism. It is only of late years, I think, that he has taken to joking on the religious practices of his neighbours, whose shortcomings once seemed too serious for joking. That [Illustration: LOCH LUBNAIG, PERTHSHIRE] “one” of the servant girl who described the services at Westminster Abbey as “an awful way of spending the Sabbath” may be taken as a sign of growing charity. Yet, in the past, too, a Scotsman seldom chuckled so heartily as over any rebuke to priestly pretension within his own borders. Jenny Geddes’s rough form of remonstrance with the dignitary who would have read the mass in her lug was a practical form of Scotch humour, that on such subjects is apt to have a good deal of hard earnest in it. As for the Kirk’s own ministers, the tyranny ascribed to them by Buckle has long been tempered by stories at their expense. Buckle’s famous comparison of Spain and Scotland is vitiated by his leaving out of account that natural sense of humour that has aided popular instruction in counteracting superstition. Dean Ramsay ekes out Carlyle and other weighty authors who explain how Irving found no depth of earth in Scotland for the seeds of his wild enthusiasm, and why the tourist seeks in vain for winking Madonnas at Kirkcaldy, long ago done with all relics and images but the battered figureheads of her whalers.