All parties, high and low, submitted to the Brehon Laws, and abided by the judge’s decisions; unless the party who lost the suit thought the decision wrong--which indeed happened but seldom--in which case, he appealed to the court of a higher brehon. Then, if it was found that the first had given an unjust decision, he had to return the fee and pay damages, besides more or less losing character, and lessening his chances of further employment. So the brehons had to be very careful in trying cases and giving their decisions. The highest people in the land, even kings and queens, had to submit to the laws, exactly the same as common subjects; and if a king was wronged, he had to appeal to the law, like other people. A couple of hundred years ago, when the kings of France were, to all intents and purposes, despotic, and could act much as they pleased towards their subjects, a learned French writer on law, during a visit to England, happened to pass near the grounds of one of the palaces, where he observed a notice on the fence of a field belonging to the king:--“Trespassers will be prosecuted according to law.” Now this gave him great pleasure, as it showed how the king had to call in the aid of the law to redress a wrong, like any of his subjects; and it gave him occasion to contrast the condition of England with that of France, where the king or queen would have made short work of the trespasser, without any notice or law at all. But if the same Frenchman had been in Ireland 1,500 years ago, he might have witnessed what would give him still greater pleasure:--not a mere notice, but an actual case of trespass on a queen’s ground, tried in open court before his eyes. In those days there reigned at Tara a king named Mac Con, whose queen had a plot of land, not far from the palace, planted with _glasheen_, i.e., the woad-plant, for dyeing blue. In the neighbourhood there lived a female _brewy_, or keeper of a hostel for travellers, who had flocks and herds like all other brewys. One night a flock of sheep belonging to her broke into the queen’s grounds, and ate up or destroyed the whole crop of glasheen; whereupon the queen summoned her for damages. In due course the case came before the king (for the queen would not appear before an ordinary brehon), and on hearing the evidence he decided that the sheep should be forfeit to the queen to pay for the crop. Now, although the glasheen was an expensive and valuable crop, the sheep were worth a great deal more; and the people were enraged at this unjust sentence; but they dared not speak out, for Mac Con was a usurper and a tyrant.