This mode of making process-servers eat the process was not at all confined to Connemara. I have myself known it practised often at the colliery of Doonan, the estate of my friend Hartpole, when his father Squire Robert was alive. It was quite the custom; and if a person in those times took his residence in the purlieus of that colliery, serving him with any legal process was entirely out of the question; for if a bailiff attempted it, he was sure to have either a meal of sheepskin or a dive in a coal-pit, for his trouble.
This species of outrage was, however, productive of greater evil than merely making the process-server eat his bill. Those whose business it was to serve processes in time against the assizes, being afraid to fulfil their missions, took a short cut, and swore they had actually served them, though they had never been on the spot;—whereby many a judgment was obtained surreptitiously, and executed on default upon parties who had never heard one word of the business:—and thus whole families were ruined by the perjury of one process-server.
The magistrates were all country gentlemen, very few of whom had the least idea of law proceedings further than when they happened to be directed against themselves; and the common fellows, when sworn on the holy Evangelists, conceived they could outwit the magistrates by kissing their own thumb, which held the book, instead of the cover of it; or by swearing, “By the vartue of my oath it’s through (true), your worship!” (putting a finger through a button-hole.)
So numerous were the curious acts and anecdotes of the Irish magistrates of those days, that were I to recite many of them, the matter-of-fact English (who have no idea of Irish freaks of this nature) would, I have no doubt, set me down as a complete romancer.
I conceived it would much facilitate the gratification of my desire to learn the customs of the Irish magisterial justices by becoming one myself. I therefore took out my didimus at once for every county in Ireland; and being thus a magistrate for thirty-two counties, I of course, wherever I went, learned all their doings; and I believe no body of men ever united more authority and less law than did the Irish justices of thirty years since.
DONNYBROOK FAIR.
Donnybrook contrasted with St. Bartholomew’s—Characteristics of the company resorting to each fair—Site upon which the former is held—Description and materials of a Donnybrook tent—Various humours of the scene—The horse fair—Visit of the author and Counsellor Byrne in 1790—Barter and exchange—The “gentle Coadjutor”—The “master cobbler”—A head in chancery—Disastrous mishap of Counsellor Byrne—Sympathy therewith of the author and his steed—The cobbler and his companion—An extrication—Unexpected intruders—Counsellor Byrne and his doctor—A glance at the country fairs of Ireland—Sir Hercules Langreish and Mr. Dundas—Dysart fair—The fighting factions—Various receipts for picking a quarrel—Recent civilization of the lower classes of Emeralders.
The fair of Donnybrook, near Dublin, has been long identified with the name and character of the lower classes of Irish people; and so far as the population of its metropolis may fairly stand for that of a whole country, the identification is just. This remark applies, it is true, to several years back; as that entire revolution in the natural Irish character, which has taken place within my time, must have extended to all their sports and places of amusement; and Donnybrook fair, of course, has had its full share in the metamorphosis.
The old Donnybrook fair, however, is on record; and so long as the name exists, will be duly appreciated. Mr. Lysight’s popular song of “The Sprig of Shillelah and Shamrock so Green,”[[26]] gives a most lively sketch of that celebrated meeting—some of the varieties and peculiarities of which may be amusing, and will certainly give a tolerable idea of the Dublin commonalty in the eighteenth century.