The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't got the joke yet.

Herford’s quip plays on ethnic stereotyping and the long, intertwined cultural histories of Ireland and Scotland. It treats the bagpipes—an instrument often associated with Scottish identity—as if they were a practical joke “gifted” by the Irish, with the Scots humorlessly persisting in the joke by continuing to play them. The humor depends on incongruity (a national symbol recast as a prank) and on the familiar comic trope of one party failing to recognize they are the butt of the joke. Read more broadly, it satirizes how traditions can be adopted, cherished, and institutionalized even when outsiders find them absurd or abrasive.