or bloody heads is astonishing:  but more astonishing is the number of those who, though they are scarcely able by daily labour to procure daily food, will nevertheless, without the least reluctance, waste six or seven hours of the day lounging in the yard or court of a justice of the peace, waiting to make some complaint about—­nothing.  It is impossible to convince them that time is money.  They do not set any value upon their own time, and they think that others estimate theirs at less than nothing.  Hence they make no scruple of telling a justice of the peace a story of an hour long about a tester (sixpence); and if he grows impatient, they attribute it to some secret prejudice which he entertains against them.

Their method is to get a story completely by heart, and to tell it, as they call it, out of the face, that is, from the beginning to the end, without interruption.

’Well, my good friend, I have seen you lounging about these three hours in the yard; what is your business?’

’Please your honour, it is what I want to speak one word to your honour.’

‘Speak then, but be quick.  What is the matter?’

’The matter, please your honour, is nothing at-all-at-all, only just about the grazing of a horse, please your honour, that this man here sold me at the fair of Gurtishannon last Shrove fair, which lay down three times with myself, please your honour, and kilt me; not to be telling your honour of how, no later back than yesterday night, he lay down in the house there within, and all the childer standing round, and it was God’s mercy he did not fall a-top of them, or into the fire to burn himself.  So please your honour, to-day I took him back to this man, which owned him, and after a great deal to do, I got the mare again I swopped (exchanged) him for; but he won’t pay the grazing of the horse for the time I had him, though he promised to pay the grazing in case the horse didn’t answer; and he never did a day’s work, good or bad, please your honour, all the time he was with me, and I had the doctor to him five times anyhow.  And so, please your honour, it is what I expect your honour will stand my friend, for I’d sooner come to your honour for justice than to any other in all Ireland.  And so I brought him here before your honour, and expect your honour will make him pay me the grazing, or tell me, can I process him for it at the next assizes, please your honour?’

The defendant now turning a quid of tobacco with his tongue into some secret cavern in his mouth, begins his defence with—­