CHAPTER VI.

A HIGHLAND SCHOOL A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

I went home the other day.

Home to Scotland, I mean. For though I may be found all winter long at work here in my wigwam, in one of the sweetest sylvan nooks of bonnie Berks, "My heart's in the Highlands," as the old song says.

Well, I work here for my boys and my girls, that is, for the thousands--I think I may say thousands at least--of lads and lasses who do me the honour of reading my books and stories.

England has endeared itself to me by many a tie of friendship and of love. But home is home, you know, and so in spring-time, when the light green tassels droop from the larch-trees, with their tiny crimson buds, when the mavis makes the woodlands ring with his glad clear notes, and the linnet sings its own sweet wee love-song among the banks of golden furze that hug the ground on our Scottish moorlands--I go home. And I go home again in autumn, when the purple and crimson of heather and heath cover mountain and brae, and the whirr of the gorcock is heard on the hills. When streams roll wilder as they dash onwards to the sea, and solemn pine forests nod dark in the breeze.

Waxing poetical, I do believe! Well, I am taken that way sometimes.

Anyhow, I went home the other day, and as I sat on a rock high up in the Deeside Highlands, and gazed around on scenery that, for wild and lonesome grandeur, is hardly to be surpassed in all broad Scotland, I do believe that the tears would have dropped from my eyes, had not the Wizard of the North come to my aid, and bade me declaim as follows:

I had to stand up to do it, mind you.

"This is my own, my native land. * * * * * "O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood, Land of my sires! what mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band That knits me to thy rugged strand?"

"Well," said a voice close behind me, "after that I think you had better come home and take tea with me."

I was so taken aback, and so shy at being caught rhapsodizing, as one might call it, that had there been a fox's burrow anywhere near, I should have dived head first into it.

The speaker was the village minister, a good and clever little man, who plays and sings, and does any number of nice things.

Of course, I would go and have tea; so down the mountain-side we went together.

There was nobody else at the minister's house except an old maiden lady, who spends most of her time in visiting the poor and--gossiping.

I soon found out that she and I were not on the same platform as regards boys.

"O, I _hate_ boys," she said emphatically.

"Well, _I_ don't," I observed mildly.

"O, but _I do_," she snapped, "and I never see a boy without thinking of a monkey. Boys are noisy, chattering, howling, whistling, teasing brats, and never out of wickedness except when asleep. Gentle or simple, they are all the same at heart, just as full of mischief as this delicious new-laid egg is full of----"

She cut the top off, viciously too, as if the poor egg had been a boy.

There was a chicken in it!

Well, I couldn't stand it any longer. I just laughed and laughed, and leant back and laughed, till the minister's chair began to crack. Yes, and the minister joined me too, right heartily.

But Miss Steelyard pierced me through and through with those indignant little grey eyes of hers, till I began to think I'd gone too far.

"Ah! well, Miss Steelyard," I said winningly, "I suppose there are boys and boys."

"No, I won't admit it," she snapped. "They are all boys, every one of them--'deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.'"

Well, I wasn't going to stand that.

"For my own part," I said, "I rather like a boy who has some spirit, and who even plays tricks. There is never any saying what a bad boy may turn out. He might stand at the head of a great republic, Miss Steelyard."

"O, yes," said this lady, witheringly, "or dangle at the end of a long rope."

As I saw there was no soothing the old maid, I sipped my tea in silence till the parson changed the subject to trout-fishing.

But I maintain, nevertheless, dear readers, that there are boys and boys.

To which of these catalogues my grandfather belonged when he was a boy, it is not for me to say, but for you to judge.

* * * * *

It was about thirty-five years after the terrible events I have tried to record in last chapter, before my grandfather--plain John Robertson, but called Ian when his foot was on his native heath--saw the light of day.

The day before his birth there had been several strange happenings, all duly related by his mother's nurse, an ancient dame, called Yonish MacPhee. Her name was not MacPhee--fa--fi--fum, though it might have been, for Yonish wore a mob-cap, and dreamt dreams and saw visions.

Come to think of it, I dare say the mob-cap had not much to do either with the dreams or visions, but it was a weird looking head-dress of bleached cotton, with flaps all round the front, that sometimes almost hid her thin yellow face, and sometimes blew right back on her neck, or stuck straight out like the lugs of an oar-eared rabbit. No wonder people said she was a witch. Anyhow, the day before his birth, Yonish saw four magpies sitting all in a row on the limb of a dead tree. This was a bad omen!

Then about fifty red-deer came out of the forest and ate up about half an acre of green springing oats. This was good for the deer, but bad for the farmer. Yonish would have gone to "hush-oo" them away, but they would have tossed the old lady on their horns, and played skittles with her.

That day, too, a raven set upon the chimney and croaked, the cream turned sour, and the nanny-goat let down no milk.

But in spite of all these omens, grandfather was declared to be the finest child ever seen in the parish, with his father's nose, and the very blue eyes of his mother. I myself won't take the nose in, because I have been told that my great grandfather's nose was very large. He snuffed, and there was no want of accommodation for the snuff.

That is the mildest way of putting it.

Well, then, my grandfather began to grow up. I have no authentication of this. I simply reason from analogy. Most boys do grow, for they have not much else to do or think about.

From swaddling bands to kilts. And having arrived at the latter stage, he began to take notice of things, putting this and that together as it were, and drawing his own conclusions.

At seven years of age he was sent to school, and then his mind began to expand as well as his body. It was a day-school, of course, and stood about a mile and a half from his father's house.

I dare say it was a very humble sort of an edifice; it was pulled down long ago. But this school was kept up by the Kirk, and the curriculum was of no mean order.

It stood a little way off the road, I have been told, and was a long, low, stone building, thatched with heather, and not unlike a tiny church, for the door was in the eastern gable, and there were two windows at each side with real glass in them, each pane being very green and with a bull's eye in the centre.

Those windows did not draw up nor down; and when the dominie wanted ventilation he simply opened the door "wide to the wall."

The scholars, as they were called, were about thirty or more, and came from far and near. They were of both sexes, the girls occupying one side of the school, the boys the other. Near the far gable, and close to the fire, there was a kind of little pulpit, and here the dominie reigned serene, monarch of all he surveyed.

Here too, in a drawer, was the tawse--terrible weapon of punishment, especially on a cold day when one's hands are blue: flogging, in the English sense, was never permitted in Scottish schools. The palms or fingers were warmed with the brutal tawse, and oftentimes boys were slashed around the bare feet and ankles, and their howls for mercy would be heart-rending. But mercy was unknown to the souls of those old-time dominies. My own knowledge of Latin was all flogged into me with the tawse, and I used to believe the dominie had no soul, only just a gizzard like a hen or a cock.

When young Ian first went to school, he thought he knew a thing or two; for he had been taught at home, and could already read the New Testament and make pot-hooks and figures on a slate. He thought he knew as much as the teacher, but he was very soon undeceived.

Why, this dominie could not only read Virgil and Horace, but he could even talk good English. So could the boy Ian.

But Gaelic was always spoken in the play-ground, and English and Gaelic in school.

On Fridays not a word of Gaelic was allowed to be uttered.

The schoolmaster was said to be an angel out of doors, but a perfect--well, not an angel--in the school-room.

There was a sturdy independence about Ian, that did not tend to make the dominie love him. The first day he came, the teacher had him up, and addressed him in English.

"How old are you?"

"Seven."

"Say seven, sir."

"Seven, sir."

"What is your name?"

"Ian."

"Ian, _Sir_."

"No, Ian Robertson."

"Say, John Robertson."

"Shan't! My name is Ian."

"Well, you'll have a touch of the tawse."

"Does she hurt?"

"'Deed, indeed she does. Now what's your name?"

"Sir John Robertson."

Then the boy's tongue went off at a tangent as it were, and he rattled off the following gibberish:

"Sir John Robertson is my name And Scotland is my nation, Forest Farm's my happy home And heaven my expectation."

Sir John, as the boys determined to call him, was now permitted to take his slate and sit down.

But he was very sulky for a time.

Why had he been sent to school? he asked himself.

What was the good of school, anyhow? He would have but little time now to catch humble-bumble bees, to chase young rabbits, to look for birds' nests, to fish, and to climb trees.

How beautiful it was out of doors! How sweetly the sun shone in through the green glass of the windows. He had half a mind to bolt and run for it. He was sure enough the teacher couldn't catch him. But--hillo! here was a boy going to get a thrashing. There was some fun in that. Not for the culprit, however, for he spat in his hands and pulled down his sleeves when the dominie went for the tawse. But what a face he made, and how he kicked and jumped and cried when he got the first tingling "pandé." My little boy grandfather had to thrust his bonnet into his mouth to prevent himself from laughing aloud.

But, just as "pandé" number six was descending, the culprit's courage failed him, and he quickly drew in his hand. Down came the tawse on the dominie's own leg. All the boys and girls tittered, and the boy was whacked all the way back to his seat, where he cried the whole afternoon.

Ian then took to drawing little men and women on his slate. He gave each a long tail, and then held them up for the other boys to laugh aloud at. He thus succeeded, beyond even his expectations, in getting no less than three boys tawsed.

School was fine fun after all.

It was also a treat for young Ian to see how deftly the dominie threw the tawse. He was a demon bowler. When he noticed a boy, say at the other end of the school, talking or laughing, he rolled the tawse up in a ball and sent it whirling towards the urchin with an astonishing accuracy of aim, the result of long practice. The tawse would alight in the culprit's lap, and he had to carry it up--it felt like carrying a snake by the tail--and, presenting it to the pedagogue, receive his "pandés" and go back to his seat a sadder and a wiser loon.

These "pandés" reddened all the palms, and sometimes even blistered the wrist. It was ten times worse for hours to come than the feeling one experiences after a snow-ball fight.

But young Ian's first day at school came to an end at last.

"School's out!" cried the teacher.

This wasn't very elegant English, but it had a grand effect. Books and slates and Bibles were bundled away; and a rush was made for the door. Here a block occurred, of course, but finally all were free to yelp and yell, and dance and scream, till the rocks re-echoed the pandemoniacal noise.

But Ian stopped to speak to no one. He didn't like boys over much, and he hated girls, because they were so silly and couldn't do anything as it ought to be done.

So my little morsel of a grandfather flew off like a hare to the hills, his bare legs brushing the heather, and his bonnet under his arm, because a big boy made a grab at it before he left the play-ground.

When the children had all gone, the dominie put away the "tawse," locked up the school, and retired to the bosom of his family.