THE ‘SESSIONS’

The present sittings of the Fermanagh County Court have been exceedingly dull.

There were no laughable cases, no big fights over bogs, but just a lot of simple suits which should have been heard in the Petty Sessions Court.

Farmers bring even the trespass of a duck to be decided by his Honour in preference to the cheaper and more expeditious hearing before their Worships.

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

The more one attends Law Courts, the more one is convinced that the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’, is a dead letter.

‘Oh, do you hear the lies he is swearing,’ exclaimed a man in court to me, when a will case was being heard.

There were two probate suits, and in each it was put forward by the plaintiffs that the wills were forgeries.

It is almost inconceivable that such an allegation could be made in a Court of Law. And yet the hard swearing on both sides was such that one party must have been telling lies for all they were worth.

A CAT STORY

In a Fermanagh school last week, a child was set the task of writing an essay on a kitten. It was home work, and the child next day presented to his teacher an excellent essay, in which he stated that the kitten was ‘the offspring of a cat’.

The use of the word ‘offspring’ aroused the suspicion of the teacher, and the child confessed that his parents aided him with his essay. The teacher then set the boy the task of writing in school the essay over again.

After much cogitation, the effort concluded, and the child’s essay read: ‘The kitten has a tail and four legs. It is the spring off a cat.’

THE SHELBOURNE HOTEL

The Enniskillen Workhouse is within sight of its demise. Mr. W. J. Brown used to liken it during the past 20 years to the Shelbourne Hotel, and was urging that the inmates should be boarded out in that palatial hotel and thus save the ratepayers considerable expense.

Yet when the proposal was put in a concrete form by Mr. Wm. Elliott, J. P., and carried, Mr. Brown’s name was found amongst those of the opposition.

What is the reason underlying this change of face, for Mr. Brown was always the foremost advocate of ‘burning the workhouse’, and getting rid of this cumbersome and costly institution? Were not Mr. Elliott and Mr. Brown recently in opposite camps at the last ‘road sessions’?