He expresses himself with a felicity and pawky humour that equal Lord Neaves and Outram at their best, and in several poems the natural grace and pith of expression remind one more of Burns than any other writer.
Not that I know what pawky means, but it seems a word I ought to use at once, now we are on Scottish soil.
With them was a collie, much collie-er than English collies, with a pawky Scottish smile.
And after he died, miserable wreck of a man, the Spider woke and took his pawky bridge and tied up the main line for two weeks and set us crazy, for it cost us our grip on the California fast freight business.
Then came to the West End a masterful man, a Scotchman, pawky and hard.
And there will be jibing and jeering, And glancing of bonny dark een, Loud laughing and smooth-gabbit speering O' questions baith pawky and keen.
I think whan thepawky laddie spoke o' my bit gathering wi' Robin Carrick, that it was in a sincerity; but thou's get a part.
Nor is he boisterously funny: his wit is all his own, and it crops up at every corner, but not noisily: it cuts few capers, and has a pawky discretion.
As a schemer himself, he smelt a rat when the invading earl Rögnvaldr played a clever trick in getting the Fair Isle beacon lit; and his pawky eyrendi, speech, thwarted the internecine complications which that deed was designed to arouse.
How death and starvation came o'er the hail nation, She wrought sic mischief wi' her twa pawky e'en.
He was loud in praise of that book, the ironical insolence and pawky humour of which he had greatly enjoyed.
There was occasionally a pawky semi-sarcastic humour in the replies of some of the ladies we speak of, that was quite irresistible, of which I have from a friend a good illustration in an anecdote well known at the time.
I have received the four following admirable anecdotes, illustrative of dry Scottish pawky humour, from an esteemed minister of the Scottish Church, the Rev.
Her father had been a souter and a pawky chiel enough, but was doited for many years, and her mother was sair dottled.
Nothing could better illustrate the quiet pawky style for which our countrymen have been distinguished, than the old story of the piper and the wolves.
From such sources we learn that his face was one whereon were writ large, contentment with himself and with the world, as well as a certain pawky shrewdness and unaffected bonhomie.
We invariably liked best the stories at which the Laird laughed most--whether we quite understood their pawky humour or not.
