From the Derry Journal, 2 January 1931 (previously published in the Cork Examiner):
“HUMOUR AT THE IRISH BAR
By DF HANNIGAN BL
Since the jolly old days when a briefless but witty barrister, at a dinner in Dublin, thus addressed a pompous but utterly unhumorous Judge – What a curious reversal of the laws of Nature, my Lord; it is that while you have risen to the top of your profession by your gravity, I have fallen to the bottom of it by my levity.’ there has been humour at the Irish Bar. Curran bubbled over with humour, though fastidious critics might say that most of his effusions were witticisms. The distinction between wit and humour is very fine – indeed super-fine. Wit, they tell us, comes from the head- humour from the heart; and they also contend that while wit is a play upon words, humour is the deeper faculty of seeing the surprise which breaks the monotonous routine of human life.
CURRAN’S HUMOUR – OR WIT?
At any rate, here are examples of the great advocate’s amusing scintillations, whether they be characterised as ‘wit’ or ‘humour’.
One day the Liffey was flooded, and the hall and dressing rooms of the Four Courts streamed with water. Curran had a motion to make at the sitting of the Court, and he seized the first wig and gown he could lay his hands on – they were rather saturated.
‘Well, Mr Curran’ said the Judge. How do you feel this morning? ‘Swimmingly, my lord,’ promptly replied Curran. When he was challenged by Lord Clare to fight a duel, Curran in his answer said, ‘As you are six feet, and I am only five feet five inches, chalk my height on your body, and I promise not to fire above.’
Norbury hated Curran and always tried to snub him. On one occasion, when Norbury kept fondling a big dog of his while Curran was speaking, the advocate abruptly stopped. ‘Please go on, Mr Curran’ said Norbury. ‘Excuse me, my Lord,’ said Curran. ‘I thought you were in consultation with your learned friend.’ We can imagine the expression of Norbury’s face at hearing these words.
On another occasion, Norbury remarked, on a reference to a law book by Curran: ‘I fear you have not that work in your library, Mr Curran.’ ‘I have very few books in my library, my lord,’ said Curran. ‘But the contents of these books are in my head. Your Lordship has a big library, but their contents remain in the books, not in your Lordship’s head.’
Perhaps the most daring insult (under the mask of wit) that Curran ever offered to the miserable Judge was his comment on Norbury’s shake of the head while Curran was addressing the jury: ‘Never mind his Lordship shaking his head, gentlemen of the jury, for there is nothing in it.’
I have deliberately used the words ‘miserable Judge’ for Lord Norbury was the Judge who tried Robert Emmet and sentenced him to death. As for Curran, he was one of Ireland’s bravest sons, for during the period when he defended the United Irishmen, he ran the risk every night, on his way home from court, of being shot by the anti-Irish assassins of these dreadful days of intolerance.
I gladly pass on to a later day.
BUTT AND THE ‘BIG SERJEANT’
I had not been long called to the Bar when Isaac Butt and Serjeant Armstrong appeared on opposite sides before the Master of the Rolls. The Serjeant was the counsel engaged by a charitable society, and he adopted an unusually sanctimonious tone. ‘Well’ said Butt, ‘I’ve heard of a converted coal-porter and a converted cobbler and even a converted hangman, but I’ve never before heard of a converted serjeant.’ Serjeant Armstrong (who was the terror of every witness he cross-examined) had very little humour in his composition. His custom was to ask a witness who posed as innocent or respectable, how often he had been in jail; if the person giving evidence happened to be a woman whose reputation was at stake, how many acts of immorality she had committed. The Serjeant, who was nearly thirty stone in weight, suffered from dyspepsia, from an acute attack of which he became temporarily deranged, and one of the crazes was that he was a rabbit – a craze which led him to make a hole in the middle of his hat, through which, incredible as it may seem, he attempted to jump. It is gratifying to know that this powerful Irish advocate recovered his intellectual powers, and after the attack made a large income at the Bar.
DENIS CAULFIELD HERON
There must be a few barristers still living who remember Denis Caulfield Heron. He too, was a serjeant-at-law. It is an interesting fact to printers as well as to jurist that in referring to police-sergeants the word ‘sergeant’ is always spelled with a ‘g’, whereas in referring to serjeant-at-law it is always spelt with a ‘j’.
Heron had a propensity for making puns. He may have read Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’ and seen in that most enjoyable book the great lexicographer’s by no means infallible view that ‘the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket’. But, if so, this incorrigible legal punster could not overcome a habit which had become for him ‘a second nature.’
In a case where a Catholic was induced to change his creed by proselytisers, by a plentiful supply of rashers, Heron said to the jury ‘Here is an instance of a man selling his soul for greasy bacon.’ In an action for breach of promise by a young woman against a man who broke his engagement to enter a religious order, as her name happened to be Elizabeth or (familiarly) Bessie, Heron, who was counsel for the plaintiff, said, in opening the case: ‘He meant, by breaking his promise to say to her – Don’t be a silly Bessy, for I now prefer celibacy. Could a more forced pun be imagined? It almost deserves the Johnsonian criticism.
MR ‘TIM’ HEALY AND LORD JUSTICE BARRY
One of the rising young lawyers in the Free State not long since referred to the curious comment on a legal argument: ‘That capsizes my intellect,’ as originating from Mr Tim Healy, former Governor-General. But I can personally vouch for the fact that the words were first used by the late Lord Justice Barry. I had myself the honour of arguing a case before the Irish Court of Appeal, where I quoted some very old decisions from ancient volumes, and Lord Justice Barry pulled me up by exclaiming: ‘Well, that certainly capsizes my intellect.’
HUMOUR NOT DEAD AT THE IRISH BAR
Humour is not dead among Irish barristers. But we are less spontaneous now – perhaps less reckless too. In duelling days, barristers as well as professional duellists, did not hesitate to order ‘Pistols for two and coffee for one.’
The story told of a military officer might, in the eighteenth century, be told of a few fire-eating members of the Bar. An innkeeper while counting the change of a guinea thus ‘One, two, three, four,’ suddenly heard a shot and a groan and paused to say ‘Oh, poor Captain – the Lord be merciful to him.’
As we know, O’Connell killed d’Esterre in a duel. Shortly before the Liberator’s time a barrister boasted that he ‘shot his way to a good practice in the profession.’
The law is not a study which appeals to either poets or humorists. But if the study is ‘dry,’ Irishmen, whether at the Bar or any other occupation, must find some outlet for their native mirthfulness – or, to put it in homely language, for ‘letting off steam.’”
Despite the many examples of wit given in the above piece, what really sticks in the modern mind is the account of Serjeant Armstrong trying to eat his way through a top hat in the belief that he was a rabbit.
Could this be the origin of the phrase ‘I’ll eat my hat’? If so, it is just one of many expressions introduced into the English language by the lively, irreverent and verbose Irish bar!
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