Ireland's most bizarre laws

So it was illegal for Jews to wear armour up until 2006 eh? Ireland boasts some bizarre laws– JOE.ie has compiled some of the strangest.

The Irish people have lived under some odd regulations over the years, most of which were inherited from the English Common Law system. The current Government slashed some 45,000 archaic laws from the statues back in 2006, but several others are still knocking around – including one brought into effect only last year.

Here are some of the weirdest Irish laws – north and south, past and present.

But it wasn’t just the Irish who had a hard time of it. Other recently repealed laws included an 11th Century regulation obliging French men to pay a discriminatory tax. The Assise of Arms of 1181 meanwhile, banned Jews from owning armour.

Under the terms of the now repealed Adulteration of Coffee Act 1718, a 20 pound fine was levied against ‘evil-disposed persons who at the time or soon after roasting of coffee, make use of water, grease, butter, or such like material whereby the same is made unwholesome and greatly increased in weight, to the prejudice of His Majesty’s Revenue, the health of his subjects, and to the loss of all fair and honest dealers.’ It also explicitly banned traders from mixing sheep dung in with their coffee.

The mind fruit of the unionist-dominated Stormont government, in operation from the 1920s through to the beginning of the Troubles, was at times extremely odd.  Egg-related banditry reached such a level in the 1950s that the politicians deemed it necessary to enact the Marketing of Eggs Act 1957. It states that officers of the Ministry ‘shall have power to examine eggs in transit’. For whatever reason.

Not happy with interfering with egg production, they then moved on to the sacred spud with the Marketing of Potatoes Act 1964. The Act states that “A constable may seize and may detain in custody any potatoes which are being or which are suspected by such an officer or constable of being, sent out of Northern Ireland…”

Amazingly, both of these laws are still active.

The penalty for suicide up until 1964 was death by hanging.

Today, in the Republic, it is illegal to operate a flashing amber beacon on a range of vehicles such as agricultural tractors. Laws in most other European countries make the beacons a requirement, so those selling the vehicles in Ireland are forced to disconnect the tractors they import. Then the buyers reconnect them again.

Under laws in operation until 2006, anyone trying to re-enact a scene from Twilight would have could have been staring down the barrel of a year in the Joy. The law read: ‘Any person who shall pretend or exercise to use any type of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or pretend knowledge in any occult or craft or science shall for any such offense suffer imprisonment at the time of one whole year and also shall be obliged to obscursion for his/her good behavior.’

Another old school law detailed some of the methods which could be used to establish whether a murder or theft suspect was in fact guilty. The common law tract stated that the accused could be subjected to an ‘ordeal by water’. This involved prisoners being thrown into a river, lake or other large body of water tied to a millstone. Everyone knows that the innocent don’t sink, so if you dropped to the bottom you were obviously guilty. Trial and punishment all rolled into one.

Our friendly neighbours across the water enacted a string of laws designed to keep the English at the top of the food chain and the Irish firmly at the bottom. One Act of 1310, also only repealed four years ago, stipulated that only those of English race are to be received into religious orders in Ireland.

Other rather nasty English laws banned Irish men from riding white horses, horses of a certain height or those worth more than five pounds – under penalty of death. We were also banned from having facial hair.

In Northern Ireland today it’s illegal to go to the cinema or any other ticketed event on a Sunday. Because it’s the Lord’s Sabbath. The Sunday Observance Act (Ireland) 1695 states, “…And for the better preventing persons assembling on the Lord’s Day for such irreligious purposes… tickets sold for money, and any person printing or publishing any such advertisement, shall respectively forfeit the sum of fifty pounds for every such offence to any person who will sue for the same.”

For centuries, the brave and the stupid made a killing by rounding up dangerous beasts and challenging them in front of crowds of paying spectators – until the The Dangerous Performances Act (1897) came along.

The Victorian era law banned the likes of live tiger wrestling and human bear hugging performances due to the fact that the spectators were frequently falling victim to the enraged beasts.

But while many of the weirdest laws have been cast into the dustbin of legal history by our Government, they have opted to bring in one of their own – in the form of the now infamous Defamation Act 2009.

The act includes a clause which makes it illegal to say anything “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage”. And what sort of bill are you looking at for saying something unpleasant about Holy God? €25,000.

The response from civil liberty adherents was swift and funny – they set up a blasphemous Facebook group which was quickly peppered with challenges to the law from random supporters. ‘HAHA **** GOD, **** Jesus Christ, HAHA What are ye going to do to me crappy government.’

That’s some nice outrage right there.