But upon investigation of the business, it was discovered, and on the plaintiff’s own testimony, that the cow had not been killed, nor even been injured, but that the defendant had flung two stones at it, which might have inflicted great injury had they hit the animal with greater force in the eye or in any delicate place.
Defendants admitted flinging the stones, but alleged as a reason that the cow was trespassing on their grounds, which plaintiff did not seem inclined to deny. Case dismissed.—Defendant retires with unblemished honour; on which his mother steps forward, and lifting up her hands with tears and shrieks, calls upon God to witness that the defendant’s own brother-in-law had sold to her husband the very sheep on account of which he had been transported.
Not wishing probably to doubt the justice of the verdict of an Irish jury, the magistrate abruptly put an end to the lamentation and oaths of the injured woman by causing her to be sent out of court, and called the third cause on.
This was a case of thrilling interest and a complicated nature, involving two actions, which ought each perhaps to have been gone into separately, but were taken together. In the first place Timothy Horgan brought an action against Patrick Dolan for breach of contract in not remaining with him for the whole of six months during which Dolan had agreed to serve Horgan. Then Dolan brought an action against Horgan for not paying him his wages for six months’ labour done—the wages being two guineas.
Horgan at once, and with much candour, withdrew his charge against Dolan, that the latter had not remained with him for six months; nor can I understand to this day, why in the first place he swore to the charge, and why afterwards he withdrew it. But immediately advancing another charge against his late servant, he pleaded that he had given him a suit of clothes, which should be considered as a set-off against part of the money claimed.
Now such a suit of clothes as poor Dolan had was never seen, I will not say merely on an English scarecrow, but on an Irish beggar. Strips of rags fell over the honest fellow’s great brawny chest, and the covering on his big brown legs hung on by a wonder. He held out his arms with a grim smile, and told his Worship to look at the clothes—the argument was irresistible, Horgan was ordered to pay forthwith: he ought to have been made to pay another guinea for clothing a fellow-creature in rags so abominable. And now came a case of trespass, in which there was nothing interesting but the attitude of the poor woman who trespassed, and who meekly acknowledged the fact. She stated, however, that she only got over the wall as a short cut home: but the wall was eight feet high, with a ditch too; and I fear there were cabbages or potatoes in the enclosure. They fined her a sixpence, and she could not pay it, and went to gaol for three days, where she and her baby, at any rate, will get a meal.
Last on the list which I took down, came a man who will make the fortune of the London attorney, that I hope is on his way hither. A rather old, curly-headed man, with a sly smile perpetually lying on his face (the reader may give whatever interpretation he please to the ‘lying’)—he comes before the Court almost every fortnight, they say, with a complaint of one kind or other. His present charge was against a man for breaking into his courtyard, and wishing to take possession of the same. It appeared, however, that he, the defendant, and another lived in a row of houses—the plaintiff’s house was, however, first built, and as his agreement specified that the plot of ground behind his house should be his likewise, he chose to imagine that the plot of ground behind all the three houses was his, and built his turf-stack against his neighbour’s window. The magistrate of course pronounced against this ingenious discoverer of wrongs, and he left the court still smiling and twisting round his little wicked eyes, and declaring solemnly that he would put in an appale. If one could have purchased a kicking at a moderate price off that fellow’s back, it would have been a pleasant little piece of self-indulgence, and I confess I longed to ask him the price of the article.