The Scottish Law Courts have been long and justly celebrated as an arena of wit and humour of the richest sort. But the facetious counsel and the witty and eccentric judge, like the humorous and quaint divine, no longer prevail; and the current collector of the native legal facetiæ who would present brilliant specimens and illustrations must riddle the records of past generations to find them, or else adopt the simpler method, which has been most frequently followed, of riddling the riddlings of those who have successfully riddled the records before them. Despising neither of the courses indicated, I shall partially here pursue both; and, first of all, will turn to the Memorials of the late Lord Henry Cockburn, the most extraordinary passages of which perhaps are the writer’s memories of the law lords. Of Lords Braxfield, Eskgrove, Eldon, Hermand, and Meadowbank, and others, most of whom he knew personally, Cockburn tells some “unco” stories. And, surely, if we may express regret that the wit and humour of some of those are not inherited by the present occupiers of the judicial bench, we may be very thankful that the brutal severity which was practised by the first named is no longer possible. Braxfield’s maxim seems to have been, “Hang a thief when he’s young and he’ll no steal when he’s auld.” It may be doubted, says Cockburn, if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest, over which he would chuckle the more from observing that correct people were shocked. To an eloquent culprit at the bar he once said—“Ye’re a vera clever chield, my man, but ye wad be nane the waur o’ a hanging,” and perhaps he got it. “Let them bring me prisoners and I’ll find them law,” used to be openly stated as his suggestion when an intended political prosecution was marred by anticipated difficulties. And Mr. Horner, the father of Francis, who was one of the juniors in one Mair’s case, told that when he was passing the bench to get into the box, Braxfield, who knew him, whispered, “Come awa’, Mr. Horner, come awa’, and help us to hang ane o’ thae damned scoondrels.” In another political case it was pled in defence that “Christianity was an innovation, and that all great men had been reformers, even our Saviour himself.” “Muckle He made o’ that,” chuckled Braxfield, in an under voice, “He was hangit.”

Eskgrove succeeded Braxfield as the head of the Criminal Court, and a more ludicrous personage surely never existed. “His face,” says Cockburn, “varied according to circumstances, from a scurfy red to a scurfy blue; the nose was prodigious; the underlip enormous, and supported by a huge, clumsy chin, which moved like the jaw of an exaggerated Dutch toy.” When addressing a jury, if a name could be pronounced in more ways than one he gave them all. Syllable he invariably called sylla-bill, and wherever a word ended with the letter “g,” the letter was pronounced, and strongly so. And he was very fond of meaningless successions of adjectives. The article “a” was generally made into one; and a good man he would describe as “one excellent, and worthy, and amiabill, and agreeabill, and very good man.” Condemning a tailor to death for murdering a soldier by stabbing him, he addressed him thus:—“And not only did you murder him, whereby he was bereaved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell the le-thal weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which were his Ma-jes-ty’s!”

In the trial of Glengarry, for the murder of Sir Alexander Boswell in a duel, a lady of great beauty was called as a witness. She came into court veiled. But before administering the oath, Eskgrove gave her this exposition of her duty in the situation: “Young woman, you will now consider yourself as in the presence of Almighty God, and of this High Court. Lift up your veil; throw off all modesty, and look me in the face.” Having to condemn two or three persons to death who had broken into a house at Luss, and assaulted Sir James Colquhoun and others, and robbed them of a large sum of money, he first, as was his almost constant practice, explained the nature of the various crimes—assault, robbery, and hamesucken—of which last he gave them the etymology. He then reminded them that they had attacked the house and the persons within it, and robbed them, and then came to this climax—“All this you did; and God preserve us! joost when they were setten doon to their denner!”

A common arrangement of his logic, when addressing juries, was—“And so, gentlemen, having shown you that the panell’s argument is utterly impossibill, I shall now proceed to shew you that it is extremely improbabill.”

Brougham delighted to torment him. Retaliating, Eskgrove sneered at Brougham’s eloquence by calling it, or him, the Harangue. In his summing up he would say—“Well, gentlemen, and what did the Harangue say next? Why, it said this——.” Candidly, however, he had to declare that “that man Broom, or Broug-ham, was the torment of his life.” Lord Eskgrove, of course, was an unconscious humourist. So also in great measure was Lord Hermand. When Guy Mannering was first published, Hermand was so much delighted with the picture of the old Scottish lawyers in the novel that he could talk of nothing else but Pleydell and Dandie Dinmont and High Jinks for many weeks. He usually carried a volume of the work about with him; and one morning on the bench his love for it so completely got the better of him that he lugged in the subject—head and shoulders—into the midst of a speech about a dry point of law. Getting warmer every moment he spoke of it, he at last plucked the volume from his pocket, and, in spite of the remonstrances of his brethren, insisted upon reading aloud the whole passage for their edification. He went through the task with his wonted vivacity, gave great effect to every speech and most appropriate expression to every joke; and, when it was done, the court had no difficulty in confessing that they had very seldom been so well entertained. During the whole scene, Mr. Walter Scott himself was present, in his official capacity as Clerk of the Court of Session, and was seated close under the Judge.

Before Hermand was elevated to the bench, and was known among men as Mr. George Fergusson, his addresses were delivered with such animation and intense earnestness that when it was known he was to speak the court was sure to be filled. His eagerness made him froth and splutter, and there is a story to the effect that, when he was pleading in the House of Lords, the Duke of Gloucester, who was about fifty feet from the bar, and always attended when “Mr. George Fergusson, the Scotch counsel,” was to speak, rose and said, with pretended gravity, “I shall be much obliged to the learned gentleman if he will be so good as to refrain from spitting in my face.”

Hermand was very intimate at one time with Sir John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon. They were counsel together, says Cockburn, in Eldon’s first important Scotch entail case in the House of Lords. Eldon was so much alarmed that he wrote his intended speech, and begged Hermand to dine with him at a tavern, where he read the paper and asked him if it would do.

“Do, sir? It is delightful, absolutely delightful! I could listen to it for ever! It is so beautifully written and so beautifully read! But, sir, it is the greatest nonsense! It may do very well for an English Chancellor; but it would disgrace a clerk with us.”

Bacon’s advice to judges is to “draw your law out of your books, not out of your brains.” Hermand generally did neither. He occasionally showed great contempt for statute law, and would exclaim, “A statute! What’s a statute? Words—mere words! And am I to be tied down by words? No, my Laards, I go by the law of right reason, my Laards. I feel my law—here, my Laards”—striking his heart.

Drinking, in this old fellow’s estimation, was a virtue rather than a vice; and when speaking to a case where one Glasgow man was charged with stabbing another to the death in the course of a night’s carousal, “They had been carousing the whole night,” exclaimed Hermand, “and yet he stabbed him! After drinking a whole bottle of rum with him! Good God, my Laards, if he will do this when he’s drunk, what will he not do when he’s sober?”

William Maconochie (Lord Meadowbank), was an able but curious man. Before he spoke, Cockburn says, it would often have been a fair wager whether what he said would be reasonable or extravagant. All that was certain was, that even his extravagance would be vigorous and original, and he had more pleasure in inventing ingenious reasons for being wrong than in being quietly right. Sir Harry Moncrieff, who was present at his marriage, told that the knot was tied about seven in the evening, and that at a later hour the bridegroom disappeared, and on being sought for, was found absorbed in the composition of a metaphysical essay on “pains and penalties.”

There has been no more famous legal notability in Scotland than John Clerk of Eldin, afterwards Lord Eldin. When Meadowbank was yet Mr. Maconochie, he one day approached his facetious professional brother, Clerk, and after telling him that he had prospects of being raised to the bench, asked him to suggest what title he should adopt.

“Lord Preserve Us!” said Clerk, and moved off.

When pleading before the same learned senator, after he had assumed the judicial title of Lord Meadowbank, it was suggested to Clerk by his Lordship that in the legal document which he had submitted to the Court he might have varied the frequently recurring expression “also,” by the occasional use of “likewise.”

“I beg your pardon, my Lord,” said Clerk, “but the terms are not always synonymous.”

“In every case,” retorted Meadowbank, gruffly.

Clerk still dissented.

“Then cite an instance,” demanded the Judge.

“Well,” remarked Clerk, doubtless chuckling inwardly the while, “your Lordship’s father was a Judge of Session. You are a Judge of Session also, but not likewise.”

Clerk’s ready wit helped him well on many an occasion. In pleading, he frequently dropped into broad Scotch, and once when arguing a Scotch appeal case before the House of Lords, in which his client claimed the use of a mill-stream by a prescriptive right, he contended that “the watter had run that way for forty years.”

“Indeed,” argued Clerk, “naebody kens how lang, and why should my client now be deprived of the watter?” etc.

The Chancellor, much amused at the pronunciation of the Scottish advocate, in a rather bantering tone, asked—“Mr. Clerk, do you spell water in Scotland with two t’s?”

Nettled at this hit at his national tongue, Clerk immediately replied—“No, my Lord, we dinna spell watter in Scotland wi’ twa t’s, but we spell manners in Scotland wi’ twa n’s.”

On one occasion, when he had been pleading a case before Lord Hermand, already mentioned, after he had finished and sat down to receive judgment, his Lordship took up the case rather warmly, and when in the heat of an excited harangue, the saliva from his lips was spurted in the face of the sarcastic advocate.

“I have often heard o’ the dews o’ Hermon,” remarked Clerk, “but I never felt them before.”

Mr. James Wolfe-Murray became a Judge of the Court of Session, under the title of Lord Cringletie. When he was appointed, doubts were expressed by some as to his legal acquirements, and Clerk expressed his view in the following clever epigram:—

When in his sixty-fifth year he was raised to the Bench, Clerk took the title of Lord Eldin, from his family estate. Some one remarked to him that his title nearly resembled that of the Lord-Chancellor Eldon.

“The difference,” said he, “is all in my eye (i).”

Clerk had a halt in his gait, and when passing along on the street one day, he overheard a lady remark to a friend—“That’s John Clerk, the lame lawyer.”

He was about in a minute.

“No, madam,” said he, “I am a lame man, but not a lame lawyer.”

Quite right; also, but not likewise.

Another out-of-doors story in connection with this witty advocate refers to an occasion when he had been dining rather freely at the house of a friend in Queen Street, Edinburgh. Wending his way homewards “early in the morning, merrily, O,” he failed to discover his own house in Picardy Place, and observing a housemaid busily engaged in cleaning a doorstep—“My good girl,” says he, “can you tell me whaur John Clerk lives?”

“Awa’ wi’ yer nonsense,” exclaimed the astonished girl, “you’re John Clerk himsel’.”

“That’s true enough, lassie,” said he, “but it’s no John Clerk I’m seekin’ for, it’s John Clerk’s house.”

Sir James Colquhoun, Bart. of Luss, Principal Clerk of Session, was one of the odd characters of his time, and was much teased by the wags of the Parliament House. On one occasion, whilst Henry Erskine was at the Inner House Bar, during the advising of some important case he amused himself by making faces at Sir James, who was sitting at the Clerk’s table, beneath the Judges. His victim was much annoyed at the strange conduct of the tormenting lawyer, and, unable to bear it, disturbed the gravity of the Court by rising, and exclaiming—“My Lord, my Lord, I wish you would speak to Harry, he’s aye making faces at me!”

Harry, however, looked as grave as a judge.

Peace ensued, and the advising went on, when Sir James, casting his eyes towards the Bar, witnessed a new grimace from his tormentor, and convulsed Bench, Bar, and audience by roaring out, “There, my Lord, he’s at it again!”

Erskine was remarkable for his ready wit and stinging repartee. Like the illustrious John Clerk of Eldin, he was indifferent to the rules of pronunciation, and in pleading before a learned senator he spoke of a curator bonis.

“Allow me to correct you,” said his Lordship, “the word is curaator.”

“Thank you, my Lord,” said Erskine. “I doubt not your Lordship is right, since you are so learned a senaator, and so eloquent an oraator.”

Mr. Erskine of Alva, subsequently Lord Bargaig, was a person of short stature. Having been counsel in a case in which Henry Erskine appeared on the opposite side, he was obliged on account of the crowded state of the court to have a chair brought forward on which to raise himself when addressing the judge.

“This,” remarked Henry, “is one way of rising at the Bar.”

To a Judge of the Commissary Court, who talked in an inflated and pompous manner, who told him that his brother in the country had fallen from a stile and sprained his foot—

“It was fortunate for your brother,” remarked Henry, “that it was not from your style he fell, or he had certainly broken his neek.”

For the foregoing anecdotes relating to this well-known witty lawyer, as well as for the one that follows, I am indebted to the late Dr. Charles Rogers’ Illustrations of Scottish Life. On a change of ministry, Erskine was appointed to succeed Harry Dundas (subsequently Lord Melville), as Lord-Advocate. On the morning of his appointment, he met Dundas in the Parliament House, who had resumed the ordinary gown worn by all practitioners at the Scottish Bar, excepting the Lord-Advocate and the Solicitor-General. After a little conversation, Erskine remarked that he must be off to order his silk gown.

“’Tis not worth your while,” said Dundas, “for the short time you’ll want it; you had better borrow mine.”

“I have no doubt your gown,” replied Erskine, “is made to fit any party; but however short may be my time in office, it shall not be said of Henry Erskine that he put on the abandoned habits of his predecessor.”

The late Lord Rutherford was a very able lawyer, but exceedingly affected in his manner and speech, and when addressing either the Bench or a jury spoke extra-superfine English. When, however, he broke out in a passion, which was by no means an unusual occurrence, he expressed his feelings in the broad vernacular. Lord Cockburn said to him one day, “It is strange, Rutherford, that you should pray in English and swear in Scotch.”

Mr. Strang and Mr. Bruce were two members of the faculty in Parliament House, Edinburgh, who were nearly equally matched in cleverness, but most unlike as to stature. Strang was quite an Anak in height, whilst Bruce was so diminutive that he was facetiously known as “Zaccheus.” When Sheriff Barbour, of Inverness, was appointed a Lord of Session, under the title of Lord Skelton, he was naturally ignorant of the new members of the bar in Parliament House, from which he had been away for twenty years.

On an early day after Lord Skelton began his duties in the Court of Session he was hearing a case in which Bruce appeared for the prosecution, while Strang had been retained for the defence. Bruce, duly arrayed in wig and gown, the latter of which effectually hid his short legs, was standing behind the Advocate’s table, and had got under weigh in his opening remarks for the prosecution, when his Lordship interposed, with the slightest manifestation of feeling—

“It is usual, Mr. Bruce, for an advocate to stand when he addresses the Court.”

“I am standing, my Lord,” replied Bruce, deferentially.

“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons!” resumed Lord Skelton, feeling bitterly his unfortunate remark, and bowing his head for a few minutes towards his papers.

Bruce continuing his opening address, his Lordship took courage and looked up, when he saw at the other end of the bar the tall figure of Strang, towering up above his fellows. Thinking he had risen to interpose some remark against the opposing counsel’s speech, he hurriedly said—

“Kindly sit down, Mr. Strang; Mr. Bruce is before the Court just now. I shall gladly hear you afterwards.”

“I am sitting, my Lord,” explained Strang, to the utter discomfiture of the astounded judge, and amidst the roars of laughter of all the members of the bar.

It was of these two able fellows that a waggish brother-barrister made the impromptu epigram—

Lawyers, like editors, have been frequently made the butt of the satirist; but illustrations of their wit and humour, such as are here deduced—and they could be multiplied almost to any extent—show how well able they have been to hold their own—yea, to rout the enemy. Jeffrey was frequently more than equal to the occasion. When addressing a jury in a certain trial, he had occasion to speak freely of a military officer who was a witness in the cause; and having frequently described him as “this soldier,” the witness, who was present, could not restrain himself, but started up, and called out—

“Don’t call me a soldier, sir; I am an officer!”

“Well, gentlemen of the jury,” proceeded Jeffrey, “this officer who, according to his own statement, is no soldier,” etc.

And what cause could the livelier of them not extract fun from? At a jury trial in the town of Jedburgh, in which Moncrieff, Jeffrey, and Cockburn were engaged as counsel, while the former was addressing the jury, Jeffrey passed a slip of paper to Cockburn, with the following case for his opinion:—

“A legacy was lately left by an old lady to the Peer of Aberdeen. As the will was written by the Dowager herself, and by no means distinguished for correctness of orthography or expression, a dispute has arisen as to the intent of the testator; and the following claimants have appeared for the legacy:—1st, the Earl of Aberdeen; 2nd, the Commissioners for erecting the pier at Aberdeen; and, 3rd, the Manager of the Charity Workhouse, who grounds his right on the fact that the old lady was in the habit, more majorum, of pronouncing poor peer. To which of the parties does the money belong?”

Cockburn immediately wrote in answer—“To none of the three; but to the Horticultural Society of Scotland for the purpose of promoting the culture of a sort of fruit called, or to be called, the Pear of Aberdeen.”

Many humorous instances of attempts to evade the law, and successful and unsuccessful attempts to get the better of it, could be cited; but most of them, of necessity, have been wicked as well as witty, and lie somewhat outside of my subject. One or two, however, may be tolerated, and the first, which reveals a biter neatly bitten, will be enjoyed. A dealer having hired a horse to a lawyer, the latter, either through bad usage or by accident, killed the beast, upon which the hirer insisted on payment of its value; and if it was not convenient to pay costs, he expressed his willingness to accept a bill. The writer offered no objection, but said he must be allowed a long date. The hirer desired him to fix his own time, whereupon the writer drew a promissory note, making it payable at the day of judgment. An action ensued, when, in defence, the lawyer asked the judge to look at the bill.

Having done so the judge replied—

“The bill is perfectly good, sir; and, as this is the day of judgment, I decree that you pay to-morrow.”

Steenie Stuart, a recently deceased and well-known inhabitant of a populous northern burgh, got “roarin’ fou’ ilka pay nicht,” and, in consequence, had frequently to appear and answer for his sins at the bar of the Police Court. As he approached the rail with a leer of recognition and compromise in his eye one Monday morning, the magistrate hailed him with “Here again, Steenie?”

“Ou, ay, Bailie,” Steenie replied.

“An’ are you no ashamed o’ yersel’?”

“’Deed, am I, Bailie; black ashamed.”

“Then what brings ye here ilka ither week?”

“Dinna blame me, Bailie. I canna help it. There’s a curse on the name.”

“A curse on whatna name?”

“On my name, Bailie; on the name o’ Stuart.”

“What d’ye mean, sir?”

“The Stuarts, ye ken, ha’e aye been unfortunate. James the First fell by the hands o’ assassins in the toun o’ Perth; James the Second was killed at the siege o’ Roxburgh Castle; James the Third was murdered by his rebellious subjects; James the Fourth lost his life in the Battle o’ Flodden Field; James the Fifth died o’ a broken heart; Mary, puir Mary, lost her head an’ her croon baith thegether; Charlie had neither a head nor a croon to lose, or he wad ha’e lost the ane or the ither, or baith.”

“Ay, ay, Steenie,” interjected the witty Bailie, “there’s nae doot the Stuarts have had a fatal habit o’ losin’ their heads an’ their croons, but yours is a case of an especially aggravated nature. They lost nae mair than a’e croon and a’e head each, but you ha’e lost mair heads an’ mair croons than a’ the lave putten thegether, for you lose yer head maistly every Saturday nicht in Tam Johnstone’s public house, an’ yer croon afore the Court here ilka Monday mornin’. It’ll no do, Steenie lad. It’ll no do. Five shillings, or seven days.”

A Coupar-Angus man, not many years ago, was sued for debt in the Sheriff Court at Perth, and on the day of the trial was met by a friend on the High Street of the Fair City.

“By the by,” said the friend, “ye’ve a case in the Coort the day.”

“Hoch! it’s owre an oor syne,” was the reply.

“An’ hoo cam’ ye on?” inquired the friend.

“I wan.”

“Ye wan!” exclaimed the surprised interrogator, who knew that the debt was a just enough one. “Hoo did ye manage to win?”

“Daugon’d!” exclaimed the erewhile defendant, “I couldna but win; the thing was left to my ain oath.”

Swearers, of course, who view the oath as a thing of expediency, as evidently that man did, come in handy about Courts of Law, and not very long since, in the same Sheriff Court, a batch of witnesses “swore” a young man so clearly out of a charge of assault that a party in Court, who was subsequently to be called on a similar charge, was heard whispering to a friend—“Lord, Tam, I wad gie a pound for half an oor o’ thae witnesses.”

Witnesses are a widely various lot, and are often the source of much amusement ’tween Bench and Bar. Great tact is required by the lawyer who would get “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” out of some of them; and this sometimes, not because of any desire on the witnesses’ part to prevaricate, but from perfectly innocent causes. Cockburn was exceedingly happy in the management of some of those who hailed from country places, and one case in which Jeffrey and he were engaged as counsel is memorable. A vital question in the cause was the sanity of one of the parties primarily concerned.

“Is the defendant, in your opinion, perfectly sane?” said Jeffrey, interrogating one of the witnesses, a plain, stupid-looking country man.

The witness gazed in bewilderment at the questioner, and gave no answer. Jeffrey repeated the question, altering the words—

“Do you think the defendant is perfectly capable of managing his own affairs?”

Still in vain.

“I ask you,” said Jeffrey, “do you consider the man is perfectly rational?”

No answer yet.

“Let me tackle him,” said Cockburn.

Jeffrey sat down, whereupon Cockburn assumed his broadest Scottish tone and accent, and turning to the obdurate witness, began—

“Hae ye your mull wi’ ye?”

“Ou, ay!” said the awkward countryman, and diving his hand into his coat pocket he drew forth his snuff-horn and handed it over to the witty counsel.

“Noo, hoo lang hae ye kent John Sampson?” inquired Cockburn, tapping the mull familiarly with his finger, and taking a pinch.

“Ever since he was that heicht,” was the ready reply, the witness indicating with his hand the alleged altitude.

“An’ d’ ye really think noo, atween you an’ me,” said the advocate, in his most insinuating Scotch manner, “that there’s onything ava intill the cratur’?”

“I wadna lippen him wi’ a bull-stirk,” was the instant and brilliant rejoinder; and Jeffrey admitted that Cockburn had fairly extracted the essence of the evidence.

Cockburn, who entered the faculty in the year 1800, was in his day the most eloquent and persuasive orator at the Scottish Bar. With his impressive oratory, writes one, his expressive face and fine eye, his mellow voice, and his pure and homely Scottish dialect, he was almost irresistible with a jury, or in the General Assembly of the Church, where he was often engaged as counsel. On the trial of the infamous Burke and his wife, in 1829, for numerous murders of unfortunate creatures whom they had lured into their den and murdered, and whose bodies they sold to the Edinburgh doctors for dissection purposes, he acted as counsel for the woman. The trial lasted till five in the morning of the second day, and after sixteen or seventeen hours’ previous exertion, he addressed the jury, in one of the most impassioned, and powerful speeches he ever delivered. He spoke for an hour, and literally held the jury and the audience spell-bound. His chief aim was to break down the evidence of Hare, and his wife, who were socii criminis, and had been admitted by the Crown as approvers. While the miserable woman was giving her evidence, she had a child in her arms, who continued to scream almost incessantly. After drawing, in scathing and terrible words, a picture of her and Hare’s atrocities, whom he represented as the real criminals, he ascribed the screaming of the child to terror, “as if it had felt the fingers of the murderous hag clutching its little innocent throat.” His peroration, delivered with a glistening eye, in tones of the utmost solemnity and pathos, put it to the jury that there was no real evidence except that of the approvers, and that if they found the accused guilty upon such evidence as that of the two Hares, “these [pointing with a tremulous hand to the accused] will be murdered, and these [pointing to the jury] will be perjured.” Horrified as all in Court had been at the fearful atrocities disclosed on the trial, there was, when he sat down, a universal hum of sympathy from the large audience. His speech saved the woman’s life; for, while the jury found the man guilty, their verdict in the case of the woman was “not proven.”

For racy wit and humour Cockburn was equally distinguished as he was for eloquence. On one occasion he was engaged in a case in which some miscreant had ill-used and maimed a farmer’s cattle by cutting off their tails. At the conclusion of a consultation, at which the farmer was present, some conversation took place as to the disposal of the animals. Turning to him, Cockburn said the cattle might now be sold, but that he must be content to sell them wholesale, because he could not retail them. On another occasion he was counsel for a man accused of a capital crime, for which, if found guilty, the punishment was death. The evidence was quite conclusive as to the man’s guilt. When the jury had retired to consider their verdict, his client roundly taxed him with not having done him justice in the defence. He bore the fellow’s insolence for some time, but at last he gave him the pithy reply—“Keep your mind easy, my worthy friend, you’ll get perfect justice about this time six weeks”—six weeks being then the period allowed to elapse between a sentence of death and its execution.

That recalls a story told by Dr. Rogers concerning Sir John Hay, Bart., at one time Sheriff-Substitute of Stirlingshire, and one of the most facetious members of his order. Sir John had a habit, even when sitting on the bench, of crooning, or whistling, in an undertone, one or other of the Scottish airs. A youthful panel was in his court, found guilty of an act of larceny, for which in those days a sentence of banishment might be pronounced. After awarding him a sentence of imprisonment for a period, Sir John added, “and take care you don’t come here again, my man, or——,” and he closed the interview by humming the tune “Ower the Water to Charlie,” affording a gentle hint, which was no doubt well enough understood.

The Judges and Counsel engaged in our Scottish Law Courts, it has been seen, have been a peculiarly witty and entertaining set, and the same may be said of some of the witnesses who have passed through their fingers. The following examination, which took place in a question tried in 1817, in the Jury Court, between the Trustees on the Kinghorn Passage and the town of Kirkcaldy, affords a striking illustration of the cannieness of one.

The witness was called on the part of the trustees, and apparently full of their interest. The counsel having heard that the man had got the present of a coat from the clerk to the trustees before coming to attend the trial, thought proper to interrogate him on that point; as, by proving this, it would have the effect of completely setting aside his testimony. The examination was as follows:—

“Pray, where did you get that coat?”

The witness (looking obliquely down on the sleeve of his coat, and from thence to the counsel), with a mixture of effrontery and confusion, exclaimed—

“Coat, coat, sir! Whare got I that coat?”

“I wish to know where you got that coat?”

“Maybe ye ken whare I got it?”

“No; but we wish to know from whom you got it?”

“Did ye gi’e me that coat?”

“Tell the jury where you got that coat?”

“What’s your business wi’ that?”

“It is material that you tell the court where you got that coat?”

“I’m no obleeged to tell about my coat.”

“Do you not recollect whether you bought that coat, or whether it was given to you?”

“I canna recollect everything about my coats—whan I get them, or whare I get them.”

“You said you remembered perfectly well about the boats forty-two years ago, and the people that lived at Kirkcaldy then, and John More’s boat; and can you not recollect where you got that coat you have on at present?”

“I’m no gaun to say onything about coats.”

“Did Mr. Douglas, clerk to the trustees, give you that coat?”

“Hoo do you ken onything about that?”

“I ask you, did Mr. Douglas, clerk to the trustees, give you that coat?”

“I’m no bound to answer that question, but merely to tell the truth.”

“So you won’t tell where you got that coat?”

“I didna get the coat to do onything wrang for’t; I didna engage to say onything that wasna true.”

The Lord Chief Commissioner, when the witness was going out of the box, called him back and observed, “The Court wish to know from you something farther about this coat. It is not believed or suspected that you got it improperly or dishonestly, or that there is any reason for your concealing it. You may have been disinclined to speak about it, thinking that there was something of insult or reproach in the question put from the bar. You must be sensible that the bench can have no such intention: and it is for your credit, and the sake of your testimony, to disclose fairly where you got it. There may be discredit in concealing, but none in telling where you got it.

“Where did you get the coat?”

“I’m no obleeged to tell about my coat.”

“True, you are not obliged to tell where you got it, but it is for your own credit to tell.”

“I didna come here to tell about coats, but to tell about boats and pinnaces.”

“If you do not tell, I must throw aside your evidence altogether.”

“I’m no gaun to say onything about my coat; I’m no obleeged to say onything about it.”

Witness went away, and was called back by Lord Gillies.

“How long have you had that coat?”

“I dinna ken how lang I ha’e had my coat. I ha’e plenty o’ coats. I dinna mind about this coat or that coat.”

“Do you remember anything near the time: have you had it a year, a month, or a week? Have you had it a week?”

“Hoot, ay, I daresay I may.”

“Have you had it a month?”

“I dinna ken: I cam’ here to speak about boats, and no about coats.”

“Did you buy the coat?”

“I dinna mind what coat I bought, or what coat I got.”

The upshot of it was, that their lordships were forced to reject the evidence of the witness.

Your city and burgh magistrates, too, by the sublime naturalness with which they “open their mouth and put their foot in it,” have afforded much fun to the world. A boy being brought before a newly-installed West country bailie for stealing a turnip, he sentenced him to seven days’ imprisonment, adding, in profoundly solemn tones, “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

A Glasgow magistrate had a young lad brought before him accused with abstracting a handkerchief from a gentleman’s pocket. Without waiting for proof of the accused’s guilt, the bailie addressed him, remarking, “I ha’e nae doot but ye did the deed, for I had a handkerchief ta’en oot o’ my ain pouch this vera week,” and passed sentence.

The same magisterial logician was on another occasion seated on the bench, when a case of serious assault was brought before him by the public prosecutor. Struck by the powerful phraseology of the indictment, the bailie proceeded to say, “For this malicious crime you are fined half a guinea.” The assessor remarked that the case had not been proven. “Then,” continued the magistrate, “we’ll mak’ it five shillings.”

An unfortunate fellow, many years ago, appeared at the bar of the Glasgow Police Court for being drunk and disorderly. Both the culprit and the bailie were characters in their way. The case was conclusively proved, and the bailie fined the man in fifteen shillings.

“Fifteen shillin’s!” exclaimed the man. “Bailie, you’re surely no’ in earnest! Bless ye! whan will I win fifteen shillin’s to gie ye!”

“Well,” said the bailie, “I’ll make it half a guinea, and not a farthing less.”

“Hauf a guinea! If ye fine me in hauf a guinea what’s to come o’ my puir wife an’ weans? They maun starve; there’s nae ither way o’t!” returned the offender, in a most lugubrious tone. “Ay, we maun a’ starve, or beg!”

“Well,” said the bailie, relenting, “I’ll make it seven and six, and not a farthing less!”

“Seeven an’ six! That’s just the hauf o’ my week’s wages—and there’s no’ a grain o’ meal in the hoose, nor a bit coal to mak’ it ready, even supposin’ there was! Oh, bailie, think what an awfu’ lot seven an’ six is to a workin’ man wi’ a sma’ family!”

“Well, well,” returned the good-natured magistrate, “I’ll make it five shillings, and I’ll not make it a farthing less though you were the king on the throne!”

“Weel, weel, bailie, Mary an’ me an’ the weans maun just submit,” said the knave, pretending to have broken into tears, at the same time saying to himself, “Blessed is he that wisely doth the poor man’s case consider.”

The soft-hearted bailie couldn’t stand the silent appeal of tears nor the apt quotation the artful dodger had made, so, gathering together all the poor stock of savage energy he possessed, he turned on the prisoner, and said—

“Look here! I’ll mak’ it hauf a crown, and though you were ma ain brither I couldna mak’ it less!”

Bailie Robertson of Edinburgh had not the advantage of an early education, nor the prudence to conceal his ignorance. A case was brought before him, in which the owner of a squirrel presented a claim of damages against a person who had it in charge, but who had allowed it to escape. The case was one of great complication, and the bailie was rather at a loss for a time. At length, collecting his faculties, he said to the defendant, “Hoo did it manage to get awa’?”

“The door o’ the cage was open, and it gaed oot through the window,” was the reply.

“Then, hoo did you no’ clip its wings?”

“It’s a quadruped, your honour,” said the defendant.

“Quadruped here, or quadruped there,” argued the magistrate, “if ye had clippit the brute’s wings it couldna hae flown awa’. I maun decide against ye.”