"Willie Broon," said the class, and Willie Broon cocked his head proudly.
"And who is the best fighter?"
"Tom Murray," answered the boys, and one little chap added: "Tom cud fecht Willie Broon wi' one hand."
Tom tried to look modest.
I went round the class and with one exception every child had at least one branch of life in which he or she found a sense of superiority. The exception was Geordie Wylie, a small lad of thirteen with a white face and a starved appearance. The class were unanimous in declaring that Geordie had no talent.
"He canna even spit far enough," said one boy.
Geordie's embarrassment made me change the subject quickly, but I made up my mind to have a talk with him later.
Some of the reasons for individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh's feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling; another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in lessons, although a few were proud of their needle-work.
I then went on to ask them what their highest ambition in life was. The boys showed less imagination than the girls. Six of them wanted to be ploughmen like their fathers. To a townsman this might appear to be a very modest ambition, but to a boy it means power and position; to drive a pair of horses tandem fashion as they do on the East Coast, with the tracer prancing on the braes; that is what being a ploughman means to a village lad. One boy wanted to be an engineer, another a clerk ("'cos he doesna need to tak' aff his jaicket to work!"), another a soldier.
"Not a single teacher!" I said.