You are just pulling my leg

The phrase "you are just pulling my leg" is used to illustrate the speaker's disbelief towards something another person has said. It has its origins in 17th century England.

"pull one's leg"
When you pull a person's leg you are spoofing or making fun of him, usually in a good-humored way. But that wasn't always the meaning of the expression. When the expression first turned up in Scotland about a hundred years ago, it was lacking the lighthearted touch it has today. In those days 'pull one's leg' meant to make of fool of him, often by outright cheating. The best theory of the origin of the phrase is that by tripping a person -- pulling his leg -- you can throw him into a state of confusion and make him look very foolish indeed." From "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollinsPublishers).

In British English, if someone says "don't pull my leg" they want you to stop playing a joke on them; to stop telling fibs and to tell the truth. There is a sense of good humour about the whole concept, but it may not have always been so. The origin is found in a Scottish rhyme in which "draw" is used in the sense of "pull" rather than the word itself. It goes:

He preached, and at last drew the auld body's leg,
Sae the Kirk got the gatherins o' our Aunty Meg.

The suggestion in the rhyme is that Aunty Meg was hung for a crime and, at the end, the preacher pulled on her legs to ensure that she was dead. The rather more sombre overtones of this possibility than are apparent in the British use of the phrase are mirrored in the American usage, where there is much more a feeling of trickery and deception when the saying is used.

This was the post I saw in here previously. I didnt want to erase it, as it is a great example of 'pulling one's leg.'

Origin
The phrase originated in 17th century (more or less) England, where a popular mode of transportation was the double-decker wagon. The driver left one leg hanging, so that when a passenger wanted to stop, they would lightly pull the driver's leg. When children were on board, they might pull the driver's leg to make the wagon stop, without actually intending to alight the vehicle. After multiple stops and no-one disembarking, the driver would not stop for those would really wanted the wagon to stop, stating "you are just pulling my leg."

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