The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh Part 6

"I am, sir."

"Who's queen?"

"Me, sir."

"Who's prince?"

"I am prince, sir."

"Tag rag and bob-tail, fall into your places."

"I've no pin, sir."

"Well down with you to the tail----now, boys."*

* At the spelling lesson the children were obliged to put down each a pin, he who held the first place got them all with the exception of the queen--that is the boy who held the second place! who got two; and the prince, the third who got one. The last boy in the cla.s.s was called Bobtail.

Having gone through the spelling-task, it was Mat's custom to give out six hard words selected according to his judgment--as a final test; but he did not always confine himself to that. Sometimes he would put a number of syllables arbitrarily together, forming a most heterogeneous combination of articulate sounds.

"Now, boys, here's a deep word, that'll thry yez: come Larry spell me-mo-man-dran-san-ti-fi-can-du-ban-dan-li-al-i-ty, or mis-an-thro-po-mor-phi-ta-ni-a-nus-mi-ca-li-a-lioy;--that's too hard for you, is it? Well, then, spell phthisic. Oh, that's physic you're spellin'. Now, Larry, do you know the difference between physic and phthisic?"

"No, sir."

"Well, I'll expound it: phthisic, you see, manes--whisht, boys: will yez hould yer tongues there--phthisic, Larry, signifies--that is, phthisic--mind, it's not physic I'm expounding, but phthisic--boys, will yez stop yer noise there--signifies----but, Larry, it's so deep a word in larnin' that I should draw it out on a slate for you. And now I remimber, man alive, you're not far enough on yet to understand it: but what's physic, Larry?"

"Isn't that sir, what my father tuck the day he got sick, sir?"

"That's the very thing, Larry: it has what larned men call a medical property, and resembles little ricketty Dan Reilly there--it retrogrades. Och! Och! I'm the boy that knows things--you see now how I expounded them two hard words for yez, boys--don't yez?"

"Yes, sir," etc., etc.

"So, Larry, you haven't the larnin' for that either: but here's an 'asier one--spell me Ephabridotas (Epaphroditas)--you can't! hut!

man--you're a big dunce, entirely, that little shoneen Sharkey there below would _sack_. G.o.d be wid the day when I was the likes of you--it's I that was the bright gorsoon entirely--and so sign was on it, when a great larned traveler--silence boys, till I tell yez this [a dead silence]--from Thrinity College, all the way in Dublin, happened to meet me one day--seeing the slate and Gough, you see, undher my arm, he axes me--' Arrah, Mat,' says he, 'what are you _in_?' says he. 'Faix, I'm in my breeches, for one thing,' says I, off hand--silence childhre, and don't laugh so loud--(ha, ha, ha!) So he looks closer at me: 'I see that,' says he; 'but what are you reading?' 'Nothing at all at all,'

says I; 'bad manners to the taste, as you may see, if you've your eyesight.' 'I think,' says he, 'you'll be apt to die in your breeches;'

and set spurs to a fine saddle mare he rid--faith, he did so--thought me so cute--(omnes--ha, ha, ha!) Whisht, boys, whisht; isn't it a terrible thing that I can't tell yez a joke, but you split your sides laughing at it--(ha, ha, ha!)--don't laugh so loud, Barney Casey."--(ha, ha, ha!)

_Barney_.--"I want to go out, if you plase, sir."

"Go, avick, you'll be a good scholar yet, Barney. Faith, Barney knows whin to laugh, any how."

"Well, Larry, you can't spell Ephabridotas?--thin, here's a short weeshy one, and whoever spells it will get the pins;--spell a red rogue wid three letters. You, Micky! Dan? Jack? Natty? Alick? Andy? Pettier? Jim?

Tim? Pat? Body? you? you? you? Now, boys, I'll hould you that my little Andy here, that's only beginning the _Rational Spelling Book_, bates you all; come here, Andy, alanna: now, boys, If he bates you, you 'must all bring him a little _miscaun_ of b.u.t.ter between two kale leaves, in the mornin', for himself; here, Andy avourneen, spell red rogue with three letthers."

_Andy_.--"M, a, t--Mat."

"No, no, avick, that's myself, Andy; it's red rogue, Andy--hem!--F--."

"F, o, x--fox."

"That's a man, Andy. Now boys, mind what you owe Andy in the mornin, G.o.d, won't yez?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir."

"I will, sir."

"And I will, sir."

"And so will I sir," etc., etc, etc

I know not whether the Commissioners of Education found the monitorial system of instruction in such of the old hedge schools as maintained an obstinate resistance to the innovations of modern plans. That Bell and Lancaster deserve much credit for applying and extending the principle (speaking without any reference to its merits) I do not hesitate to grant; but it is unquestionably true, that the principle was reduced to practice in Irish hedge schools long before either of these worthy gentlemen were in existence. I do not, indeed, at present remember whether or not they claim it as a discovery, or simply as an adaptation of a practice which experience, in accidental cases, had found useful, and which they considered capable of more extensive benefit. I remember many instances, however, in which it was applied--and applied, in my opinion, though not as a permanent system, yet more judiciously than it is at present. I think it a mistake to suppose that silence, among a number of children in school, is conducive to the improvement either of health or intellect, that the chest and the lungs are benefited by giving full play to the voice, I think will not be disputed; and that a child is capable of more intense study and abstraction in the din of a school-room, than in partial silence (if I may be permitted the word), is a fact, which I think any rational observation would establish. There is something cheering and cheerful in the noise of friendly voices about us--it is a restraint taken off the mind, and it will run the lighter for it--it produces more excitement, and puts the intellect in a better frame for study. The obligation to silence, though it may give the master more ease, imposes a new moral duty upon the chil--the sense of which must necessarily weaken his application. Let the boy speak aloud, if he pleases--that is, to a certain pitch; let his blood circulate; let the natural secretions take place, and the physical effluvia be thrown off by a free exercise of voice and limbs: but do not keep him dumb and motionless as a statue--his blood and his intellect both in a state of stagnation, and his spirit below zero. Do not send him in quest of knowledge alone, but let him have cheerful companionship on his way; for, depend upon it, that the man who expects too much either in discipline or morals from a boy, is not in my opinion, acquainted with human nature. If an urchin t.i.tter at his own joke, or that of another--if he give him a jab of a pin under the desk, imagine not that it will do him an injury, whatever phrenologists may say concerning the organ of destructiveness. It is an exercise to the mind, and he will return to his business with greater vigor and effect. Children are not men, nor influenced by the same motives--they do not reflect, because their capacity for reflection is imperfect; so is their reason: whereas on the contrary, their faculties for education (excepting judgment, which strengthens my argument) are in greater vigor in youth than in manhood. The general neglect of this distinction is, I am convinced, a stumbling-block in the way of youthful instruction, though it characterizes all our modern systems. We should never forget that they are children; nor should we bind them by a system, whose standard is taken from the maturity of human intellect. We may bend our reason to theirs, but we cannot elevate their capacity to our own. We may produce an external appearance, sufficiently satisfactory to ourselves; but, in the meantime, it is probable that the child may be growing in hypocrisy, and settling down into the habitual practice of a fict.i.tious character.

But another and more serious objection may be urged against the present strictness of scholastic discipline--which is, that it deprives the boy of a sense of free and independent agency. I speak this with limitations, for a master should be a monarch in his school, but by no means a tyrant; and decidedly the very worst species of tyranny is that which stretches the young mind upon the rod of too rigorous a discipline--like the despot who exacted from his subjects so many barrels of perspiration, whenever there came a long and severe frost. Do not familiarize the mind when young to the toleration of slavery, lest it prove afterwards incapable of recognizing and relishing the principle of an honest and manly independence. I have known many children, on whom a rigor of discipline, affecting the mind only (for severe corporal punishment is now almost exploded), impressed a degree of timidity almost bordering on pusillanimity. Away, then, with the specious and long-winded arguments of a false and mistaken philosophy. A child will be a child, and a boy a boy, to the conclusion of the chapter. Bell or Lancaster would not relish the pap or caudle-cup three times a day; neither would an infant on the breast feel comfortable after a gorge of ox beef. Let them, therefore, put a little of the mother's milk of human kindness and consideration into their straight-laced systems.

A hedge schoolmaster was the general scribe of the parish, to whom all who wanted letters or pet.i.tions written, uniformly applied--and these were glorious opportunities for the pompous display of pedantry; the remuneration usually consisted of a bottle of whiskey.

A poor woman, for instance, informs Mat that she wishes to have a letter written to her son, who is a soldier abroad. "An' how long is he gone, ma'am?"

"Och, thin, masther, he's from me goin' an fifteen year; an' a comrade of his was spakin' to Jim Dwyer, an' says his ridgiment's lyin' in the Island of Budanages, somewhere in the back parts of Africa."

"An' is it a lotther of pet.i.tion you'd be afther havin' me to indite for you, ma'am?"

"Och, a letthur, sir--a letthur, master; an' may the Lord grant you all kinds of luck, good, bad, an' indifferent, both to you and yours: an'

well it's known, by the same token, that it's yourself has the nice hand at the pen entirely, an' can indite a letter or pet.i.tion, that the priest of the parish mightn't be ashamed to own to it."

"Why, thin, 'tis I that 'ud scorn to deteriorate upon the superiminence of my own execution at inditin' wid a pen in my hand; but would you feel a delectability in my supersoriptionizin' the epistolary correspondency, ma'am, that I'm about to adopt?"

"Eagh? och, what am I sayin'!--sir--masther--sir?--the noise of the crathurs, you see, is got into my ears; and, besides, I'm a bit bothered on both sides of my head, ever since I heard that weary _weid_."

"Silence, boys; bad manners to yez, will ye be asy, you Lilliputian Boeotians--by my hem--upon my credit, if I go down to that corner, I'll castigate yez in dozens: I can't spake to this dacent woman, with your insuperable turbulentiality."

"Ah, avourneen, masther, but the larnin's a fine thing, any how; an'

maybe 'tis yourself that hasn't the tongue in your head, an' can spake the tall, high-flown English; a wurrah, but your tongue hangs well, any how--the Lord increase it!"

"Lanty Ca.s.sidy, are you gettin' on wid your Stereometry? _festina, mi discipuli; vocabo Homerum, mox atque mox_. You see, ma'am, I must tache thim to spake an' effectuate a translation of the larned languages sometimes."

"Arrah, masther dear, how did you get it all into your head, at all at all?"

"Silence, boys--_tace--' conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant_.'

Silence, I say agin."

"You could slip over, maybe, to Doran's, masther, do you see? You'd do it betther there, I'll engage: sure and you'd want a dhrop to steady your hand, any how."

"Now, boys, I am goin' to indite a small taste of literal correspondency over at the public-house here; you _literati_ will hear the lessons for me, boys, till afther I'm back agin; but mind, boys, _absente domino strepuunt servi_--meditate on the philosophy of that; and, Mick Mahon, take your slate and put down all the names; and, upon my soul--hem--credit, I'll castigate any boy guilty of _misty mannes_ on my retrogadation thither;--_ergo momentote, cave ne t.i.tubes mandataque frangas_."