Letter from Munster
Richard West
County Clare The photographs of Pope John Paul II are going up on the walls of the pubs, and the photographs of the Kennedys are coming down. The memory of the murdered President has suffered with every disclosure about his sexual activities, while Senator Edward, though popular for his views on Ireland, has not yet cleansed himself of the Chappaquiddick mud. Irish women, so I am told, cannot abide infidelity. And yet in the 12th cent,nrY here in Clare, the priests were so Infamous for their fornication that Pope Adrian Iv was obliged to call in the King Of England to send a disciplinary expedi n Throughout the Middle Ages, the Irish Church's attitudes were liberal comPared with those of today, and divorce Was obtainable on the grounds of the nusband's impotence. Clare's most famous poet, Brian Merrnnan. would have us believe that women W. ere sex-starved in his own time, the I.8th century. He described an Irish Marriage Night with A starved old gelding, blind and lamed And a lusty twenty-year-old with her parts untamed Line by line she bade him linger With gummy lips and groping finer, Gripping his thighs in a wild embrace Rubbing her brush from knees to waist But she'd nothing to show for all her labour, There wasn't a jump in the old deceiver.
The poor young woman ends up with Her knees cocked up and the bedposts shaking, Chattering teeth and sinews aching, While she sobbed and tossed through a joyless night And gave it up with the morning light.
A Clare lady and scholar informed me that, 'when we read Merriman in school, the lines like that had been removed, and anyway it's in such beautiful Irish you wouldn't notice. It's only when we saw it translated into English that it seemed, well, sensational.' Why did he write about women like that? I think it was for publicity like Edna O'Brien today. (Miss O'Brien comes from County Clare.) However, I learn that in the 18th century the oldest son of the family, the one who took over the family farm, was not supposed to marry until all the younger brothers were settled in life, which meant he was sometimes past his prime. Only 70 years ago, a Protestant judge, Mr Justice Boyd, sitting at Ennis in County Clare, was questioning a young man in his appeal on a paternity case. "'You say you never had anything to do with this girl?" "Never, my Lord". "How, old are you?" "I'm 26, my Lord". "Have you ever had anything to do with any other girl?" "Never, my Lord." "Oh my goodness! 26 and you never had anything to do with any girl! Do you expect me to believe that? Or anything else you say'? 1'11 reverse this dismiss; and give a decree of 50 and costs!"' Which he did. It was very hard to bring home to an Englishman the extraordinary standard of chastity that was in fact attained in Ireland in those days: virginal innocence was maintained by the vast bulk of the rural population, a section of the community comparatively unfamiliar to Mr Justice Boyd', was the comment of Maurice Healy in The Old Munster Circuit.
Several people had told me about this book after I mentioned an Irish legal joke in a recent Spectator. lt came out first in 1939, when the Spectator wrote that 'no book dealing with a phase of Irish life that has been published in recent years contains so many entertaining anecdotes and sketches', while Robert Lynd, in a pleasing lrishism, called it 'one of the most entertaining books that have ever come out of Ireland in a long time'. This year it appeared as a paperback from the Mercier Press of Dublin and Cork.
This book is also the origin of the judicial statement, 'You have been acquitted by a Limerick jury and you may now leave the dock without any other stain upon your character'. It may have been to the same, .accused that Richard Adams, the judge. said. 'Patrick Murphy, you have been acquitted by these 12 jurors of the crime of which you were charged. Take a good look at them. Pat; study their faces well; for I give you my solemn promise that if you are found guilty before me of doing to any one of them what you did to the prosecutor in this case, you won't get a day's imprisonment for doing it'.
The book explains in detail such intricacies as the difference between a Kerry and Tipperary alibi. The essence of the first was that the story was true in every respect save the date, while the latter depended on showing evidence that the Crown witness was somewhere else than the place he had sworn to upon the day of the crime. There was no shortage of entertainment in Munster courts before the first world war. At Listowel, once, a woman was giving the court an obviously false but highly detailed account of her rape, when the judge interrupted to tell the jury, ‘Ah! Gentlemen, you daren't hang a dog upon evidence like this! Just put your heads together and see if you want to go any further before acquitting the prisoner.' The jury collogued, and then the foreman said, 'Your Honour, we're unanimously of the opinion that the boy didn't do it; but should your Honour be wishful to hear any more evidence, we wouldn't be stopping you.'
Maurice Healy explains why lawyers like Edward Carson, who did so well at the English Bar, were much less successful in Ireland: 'Why? Because of the personnel of litigation in the two countries. The Englishman goes into a court of law unwillingly, fearfully and especially apprehensive of cross-examination. No doubt there are occasional witnesses of that kind in Ireland, too; but the vast majority go to give their evidence as a cricketer walks to the wicket, Each is confident that he will not be bowled until he has knocked up a good score He gives, as an example of this national difference, a case which was heard in London involving a number of Irish witnesses: 'One of these Irishmen, who had tuned his harp to the romantic air of his own County Court, was a shock to a judge of pedestrian imagination. [Mr Justice] Darling at last turned to him sternly and said: 'Tell me, in your country, what happens to a witness who does not tell the truth?" -Begor, me Lord", replied the Irishman, with a candour that disarmed all criticism, "I think his side usually wins". '
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