There is a hackneyed story which tells how a man who was offered a drink replied thus: ‘No, thank you. I won't have a drink, for three reasons. First, because I am a teetotaller. Second, because I've given it up for Lent. Third, because I've already had two.’ Such forms of argument are familiar in courts of law, even outside Ireland. The defendant pleads that he wasn't there when the blow was struck, but at home watching television; or alternatively that it was actually Jones, and not he himself, who did it, as he saw with his own eyes; or alternatively that the fellow deserved it anyway.