Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1896 — BLUE LAWS IN THE ISLE OF MAN. [ARTICLE]

BLUE LAWS IN THE ISLE OF MAN.

Imposed Severe Punishments for the Most Trivial Offenses, The legislature of the Isle of Man is called the house of keys, aud was formerly a judicial body, whose duty It was to Interpret the laws—to unlock their mysteries. Anyone bold euougli and ill-advised enough to slander tlie house of keys was liable to a flue of SSO and the' loss of both his ears. Two deemsters were appointed to execute the laws, which before 1417 were uncodifled and were known as breast laws, being Imparted to the deemsters in secret, and by then! kept within the secrecy of their own breasts so long as they chose, or during the whole service, though they were empowered to impart and explain to the people so much of them as should at any time seem expedient. Some of the laws ns recorded after the coditieation are extremely quaint. Here is one which recalls to mind the narrow bound and primitive way of life of tlie Manxmen. Nowhere else surely w r ould the greater crime be regarded as the less—merely because In the nature of things It could result, despite the intention of the thief, only in an enforced loan—aud the lesser crime be gravely reckoned as the greater: “If a man steal a horse or an ox It Is no felony, for the offender cannot hide them; but if he steal a capon or a piggle he shall be hanged.” “In the case of theft,” another law declares, “if it amouut to the value of sixpence halfpenny, shall be a felony to death to the offender; and under that value to be whipped or set upon a wooden horse ordered for such offenders.”

A rather Ingenious law, designed to check the breaking of pledges by untrustworthy servants who might have nn opportunity to get Improved wages, decrees that any servant hiring with two masters must give his labor to the first man he is promised to and Ills wages to the second; should the offense he repeated, the culprit is to be set In the stocks and whipped. The arms of the Isle of Man, which, though it sounds like an Irish bull to say so, are legs—three legs bent at the knee, and apparently kicking outward from a common center in the midst of a shield—have provoked a number of jocular descriptions, of which the best declares that one leg spurns Ireland, one kicks at Scotland and the third kneels to England. The feeling thus typified appears certainly to exist toward the two former countries, If we are to judge by the following laws, never repealed, though, it is needless to add, never In our day enforced: “Irish women loitering and not working are to be commanded forth of the isle with as much convenient speed as may be.” Why Irish women especially is not explained; perhaps they accompanied their husbands—the “spalpeens” came over for harvesting—and made themselves obnoxious as beggars. The other law is at least fairer in appearance, since it does not discriminate in the matter of sex, but it is no more hospitable. It enjoins “That all Scots avoid the land with the next vessel that goeth to Scotland, upon paiue of forfeiting their goodes, and their body to prison.”—Green Bag.