As republished in the Galway Observer, 21 March 1953, a satirical article about the Four Courts from the 1870-72 publication ‘Zozimus’, published by barrister and journalist Alexander Martin Sullivan, a member of the Healy-Sullivan dynasty which included, among others, his son, Serjeant Sullivan KC, his son-in-law, High Court judge George Gavan Duffy, his nephew, Tim Healy KC, and two subsequent Chief Justices of Ireland, Tom O’Higgins and Timothy Sullivan:

“DUBLIN FOUR COURTS

HUMOROUS ARTICLE BY ‘ZOZIMUS’

The Four Courts is a building, and not four narrow alleys with a wall at the end of each.  It stands on one of the Quays near the Liffey.  It is very large, and has a big nob on the top.  This nob is not nice.  There is a railing all round the Four Courts to prevent young men from scratching the names of young women on the walls…

It is a great mistake to call the Courts the ‘Four’ Courts, because there are a great deal more than four of them. This is the only untruth ever told in or about the Four Courts, and ‘tis a shame!  It ought to be called the Fourteen Courts, I once asked a man why it is not called the Fourteen Courts, and he told me that if it were so called the people would be frightened, and would not go to law for fear they should be brought through them all, and he told me it would kill the strongest man.

You can go into the Four Courts; there is no charge.  But a man once told me that the people are sometimes made to pay hundreds of thousands to be let out again.  I only tell you this because I heard it from that man.  I don’t believe he was right.  No man has so much money as that!

When you enter through the door you find yourself in a round room, and you see a lot of people walking about.  Some have wigs and gowns.  Those with the wigs and gowns are lawyers.  Lawyers are men.  Some are very young, some are very old, and most of them aren’t very good.  All are very fond of little gentlemen who have no wig, but who walk about with long folded papers in their hands.  The little men are called ‘attorneys’; and a man once told me that they live on the vitals of angry people.  But this is too horrible to believe.  I would judge that they live on port wine and mustard.  When an attorney comes into the round room all the lawyers look at him.  When the attorney takes one of the long folded papers from under his arm they all ask him to come in and dine with them; and they all look very savagely at one another.  When the attorney gives the folded paper to one of them all the rest move away, and the lawyer who has got the paper and the attorney go aside, and begin striking one another in the ribs and laughing.  This makes the other lawyers bite their nails.

Lawyers make a good deal of money and live in fine houses, and are always wishing to live in finer ones.  Some of them live in glass houses and are very quiet and don’t throw stones like bad men.  If a lawyer has a great deal of money and a loud voice he goes to some simple people in a small town and gives half-a-crown apiece to four beggarmen, and sings a song in a hotel, and says

Great, glorious and free

First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea!-

out of a window with his hat off.  Then the people cry. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!  After this they put him standing on a barrel and throw eggs, and mud, and bricks at him, and if he shows pluck, they send him to Parliament in order that the Parliament men may hear what a loud voice he has.  Sometimes when the Parliament men hear him, and cannot bear his voice it is so loud, they put a big wig and a nice red gown on him to keep him warm and make him be quiet and good.

In the round room there are refreshment tables with oranges and gingerbread men and ‘fizz’.  Fizz is a very refreshing and delicious drink, and is sold for next to nothing.  It is a kind of light Greek wine, and is more wholesome than spirits of salts, and has a more agreeable smell.  Lawyers and attorneys and people are always drinking this and eating gingerbread men and oranges.  Lawyers always choose the gingerbread men with the largest pieces of gold on the stomach.

Most of the Judges are kept in courts off this round room.  They sit in those courts, and when the lawyers become heated from eating gingerbread they get into a passion, run into the courts, and shout out very loudly.  The judges then get greatly frightened and hold up their hands and say that they ‘concur’.  This is the way they express that they are beaten.  The judges have to sit behind a thing called ‘the Bench’ lest the lawyers might get at them and blacken their eyes.

I often heard of people going through the Courts and of how dreadful a thing this is.  Now I went through the Courts, and I can say from experience that there is not much danger if you only carry a short stick and take care not to be the worse of anything.  A lot of people come up from the country to go through one Court called the Bankruptcy Court.  I would not recommend any one to do this.  There is really very little to be seen in going through this Court, and there is nothing to be gained.  It is much more pleasant to walk through the Dargle or the Gap of Dunloe or the Zoological Gardens.  Why as far as excitement goes, I’d rather go through the Coombe.  In going through the Coombe you won’t hear half as much swearing as in going through the Bankruptcy Court.

The Four Courts is so big that the Government have set it in tenements or chambers.  All the judges live there except a few of the poor ones.  In the evenings, when the Courts are shut, the judges get up games and have great fun in the round room.  They whip tops, and play leapfrog, and Aunt Sally, and a variety of other things.  One of the judges is the best at play-leapfrog.

A man once told me that the Four Courts is quite sure to be burned either at the end of the world, or on the first day of the Millenium.”

In a remarkable coincidence, the Four Courts did in fact burn down during the Irish Civil War, in a battle against a government which included Kevin O’Higgins, great-nephew of the publisher – and possible author – of the above piece.

Perhaps ‘Zozimus’ might have been more appropriately entitled ‘Nostradamus’?

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