CHAPTER III.
MY SCHOOLDAYS.
At the age of seven, I was brought home to my father and mother in Ross, to be sent to school, and prepared for Confirmation and Communion. I had received those sacraments of the Church before I was nine years of age. Confirmation day, the boys were lined along the chapel aisle in couples, the boy who was my comrade going up to the altar was Patrick Regan, and it was a singular coincidence that nine years before that, he and I were baptized the same day in the same chapel. And we went through school in the same class.
That time, when I was only a very little boy, I must have been a very big sinner, for I remember the day of my first confession, when I came out the chapel door, relieved of the weight of my sins, and faced the iron gate that stood between me and the main road, I felt as though I could leap over that gate.
If you at any time notice that I occasionally wander away from the main road of my narrative in these “Recollections,” and run into byroads or bohreens, or take a leap of fifty years in advance, from the days of my boyhood to the present days, I have high and holy authority for doing that. Father Brown, of Staten Island reading the Epistle of the day at mass yesterday (Feb. 16, 1896) read these words: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
I am speaking as a child, so far, and very likely my words will give less offense than the words I will have to say, when I grow up, and speak as a man.
In preparing for confirmation, the school broke up about noon on Saturdays, and the boys were led by the master to the chapel, which was near by. There, were Father Jerrie Molony, and his nephews, Michael and Jerrie Molony, who were home from college on vacation, and Tead Red, to help our master in instructing us in our catechism. Tead Red was the instructor in the Irish language. He had a class of his own. I saw Father Molony take hold of a boy in my class one day, and take him over to the class of Tead Red, telling him it was in the Irish language he should learn his catechism. How often here in America have I thought of Father Molony, when I met priests from the most Irish-speaking part of Ireland, who could not speak the Irish language. No wonder that our nationality should become diluted and corrupted, no wonder it should become poisoned with—Trust in the English to free Ireland for us.
But, my schoolmaster! How can I speak of him! He is dead. God be good to him. I often wonder how he got his schooling. I often wonder how the people of Ross of my early days got their schooling, for they spoke the English language more correctly than it is spoken by many of the people of this day who are called educated; and, with that, they naturally spoke the Irish language. The priests used to preach in the Irish language.
I say I wonder how the people of Ross in the generation of my father’s boyhood got their education, for they were born in a time when education was banned in Ireland. The schools that are called National schools were not established till I was born. The hedge-schools and hedge-schoolmasters were around in the generations that preceded my time. In the summer time, the children assembled in the shade of the hedges and trees, and the masters taught them their lessons. In the winter time the hedge-school was in the shelter of some farmhouse. As it was in the schooling of the Irish people, so it was in their religion. That was under a ban too; the priests were boycotted as well as the people. Yes, for two hundred years after the English religion was introduced into Ireland, any priest caught saying mass was subject to a fine; caught a second time, it was fine and imprisonment, and caught a third time it was banishment or death. Any Irishman caught attending mass was heavily fined; caught a second time, was doubly fined, and when the fines increased and were not paid, the lands of the people were confiscated, and sold out by the English. That is how the tradition is implanted in the minds of many exiled Irish men and women to-day—that their people lost their lands in Ireland on account of sticking to their religion.
There were two of the old-time schoolmasters in Ross when I was a child. Daniel Herlihy was one, and Daniel Hegarty the other. I remember being at the house of each; but it was only for a few days, or a few weeks. They had their schools in their own houses, and they turned out good scholars, too; scholars that knew Latin and Greek.