When the priest visited one of these schools, which he did whenever in the neighbourhood, it was a great event for both master and scholars. Conor Leahy was one of those masters—a very rough diamond indeed, though a good teacher and not over severe—whose school was in Fanningstown near my home. One day Billy Moroney ran in breathless, with eyes starting out of his head, to say—as well as he could get it out—that Father Bourke was coming up the road. Now we were all—master and scholars—mortally afraid of Father Bourke and his heavy brows—though never was fear more misplaced (p. [71]). The master instantly bounced up and warned us to be of good behaviour—not to stir hand or foot—while the priest was present. He happened to be standing at the fireplace; and he finished up the brief and vigorous exhortation by thumping his fist down on the hob:—'By this stone, if one of ye opens your mouth while the priest is here, I'll knock your
brains out after he's gone away!' That visit passed off in great style.
These elementary teachers, or 'hedge teachers,' as they were commonly called, were a respectable body of men, and were well liked by the people. Many of them were rough and uncultivated in speech, but all had sufficient scholarship for their purpose, and many indeed very much more. They were poor, for they had to live on the small fees of their pupils; but they loved learning—so far as their attainments went—and inspired their pupils with the same love. These private elementary schools gradually diminished in numbers as the National Schools spread, and finally disappeared about the year 1850.
These were the schools of the small villages and hamlets, which were to be found everywhere—all over the country: and such were the schools that the Catholic people were only too glad to have after the chains had been struck off—the very schools in which many men that afterwards made a figure in the world received their early education.
The elementary schools of the towns were of a higher class. The attendance was larger; there were generally desks and seats of the ordinary kind; and the higher classes were commonly taught something beyond Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic; such as Grammar, or Book-keeping, with occasionally a spice of Euclid, Mensuration, Surveying, or Algebra.
It very often happened that the school took its prevailing tone from the taste of the master; so that the higher classes in one were great at Grammar, those of another at Penmanship, some at Higher
Arithmetic, some at 'Short Accounts' (i.e. short methods of Mental Arithmetic), others at Book-keeping. For there were then no fixed Programmes and no Inspectors, and each master (in addition to the ordinary elementary subjects) taught just whatever he liked best, and lit up his own special tastes among his pupils.
So far have these words, church, chapel, scallan, hedge-school, led us through the bye-ways of History; and perhaps the reader will not be sorry to turn to something else.
Rattle the hasp: Tent pot. During Fair-days—all over the country—there were half a dozen or more booths or tents on the fair field, put up by publicans, in which was always uproarious fun; for they were full of people—young and old—eating and drinking, dancing and singing and match-making. There was sure to be a piper or a fiddler for the young people; and usually a barn door, lifted off its hinges—hasp and all—was laid flat, or perhaps two or three doors were laid side by side, for the dancers; a custom adopted elsewhere as well as in fairs—
'But they couldn't keep time on the cold earthen floor,