Anent Robert McNeil's column on mean Scots (June 29), I too encountered the continental view that Scots are mean when I lived and taught in Sweden in the 1960s.
My pupils would regale me with Scottish jokes along the lines of copper wire being invented by two Scots finding a single penny and not being able to agree on ownership.
I informed them that these jokes were made up by the English and then told them a genuine joke – the one about the Scot who was so fed up with jokes in English papers about the meanness of Scots that he wrote to one editor demanding a stop to the publication of such jokes or he would be forced to borrow another paper in future.
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