SEANN SGOIL - The Old School.
Extracts from an Essay in Gaelic from the "Prose Writings of Donald MacKinnon, 1839 -1914",the very first Professor of Celtic at Edinburgh University, in which he recalls the School somewhere near Port Mor - possibly at Gart a Ghobhainn - where he began his formal schooling in the 1840s.
" I don't know when the Schoolhouse was built or how many scholars got their start in education there. The parish was notorious in the history of the Church (of Scotland) as being the remotest place eligible for schoolhouses and churches. The School was one of many erected in the Highlands and Islands by The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and, according to the Society's rules, landowners were obliged to provide the schoolmaster with a suitable house and a small piece of land to go with it.
A casual visitor might, perhaps, have said that the School wasn't built in a particularly nice spot. There were no high mountains, lovely glens or luxuriant woodlands or anything else that would bring joy to the eye. But the building served its purpose and there were good flat places on either side of it to play on. It had a small freshwater lochan opposite which became very popular when it froze and there were secluded creeks on the seashore which were very enticing for boys to swim in. And though the scenery round about might have looked rather bleak and forlorn to the visitor, through the eyes of the boys brought up in the place it was home and every hill, burn and patch of green couldn't have looked sweeter to them.
More than this on every side there were sights that would distract the scholar from his duties. Over yonder a beach that the fisherman was still nervous about visiting, where his ancestors had fought a bloody battle to protect their homes from the strangers who came from the ocean (the Vikings, presumably, at Traigh an Tobair Fhuair - translator's note). Nearby a "Dun"(Dun Meadhonach?) covered in thistles, heather and long grass, bearing witness to the stories that the old men told about a gentler time many centuries ago. In the green knoll over there by the ruin of the old temple (Cill Chattan?) our forbears are tossing in their eternal sleep as the murmur of the stream flowing into the sea is swamped by the crash of the waves on the shore. And opposite was the western ocean, usually awe-inspiring and fascinating, whether tossed by winter storms or slumbering peacefully under the summer sun.
Nowadays you will seldom see anything like the house we called the schoolhouse. A long, broad, dark building with low walls of unhewn stone smeared with clay on the outside and blackened with smoke on the inside. A doorway on each side of the building but without a door in either of them. In the wintertime a great bundle of heather twigs, propped up by a shinty stick, would block the doorway on the weatherside from the wind. The bundle would get used up bit by bit for lighting the fire and then a bundle of straw would take its place until a cheeky cow or horse would come along the road and eat it. A cold, wet, earth floor except for the site of the fire. Windows half filled with clods of turf and the rest covered up by a slab propped up by a stone. Two holes in the roof let out the smoke that didn't find its way out of a window or doorway. Two fires on the floor in the middle of the house and a stone in between them known as the "penitence stool". Many's the time I got myself into trouble on a cold winter's day for the sole purpose of getting on to the stool. Planks found on the shore and laid between stones served as benches and there were two old tables with broken legs where we would get to practise our writing without too much risk. A grey slate with a line incised on it, writing paper as cheap as the egg lady from Greenock could get it, a quill made from a gannet's feather, "Gray", the Shorter Catechism, a Gaelic Bible with a sheepskin cover and a good shinty stick.
It would be very difficult for a teacher to turn out good pupils in this kind of situation but I believe that my old school had every convenience although it wouldn't have got the best report from today's school examiners. The schoolmaster's Knowledge wasn't that broad and he didn't get any opportunity for teacher training or to teach from his own experience. "Don't speak but good of the dead" the old saying goes and truthfully it is with affection and respect that the schoolmasters of Scotland should be remembered. And although my old schoolmaster wouldn't be chosen from today's drove of teachers to fill a vacant teaching position he deserved respect and affection and it is with affection and respect that he is remembered by every scholar he ever taught. I wouldn't have been more than seven years old when he died but I remember his looks and his ways as well as the day that he was buried. He was in the Army in his youth and the training he got there gave him an upright carriage and a manly bearing that never left him. A grey-haired man about 70, handsome appearance, intelligent-looking, warm-hearted, patient, his step grown heavy, his joints stiffening but no coward, his courage as great and his spirit as willing as when he was 18. There wasn't a boy in the school more ready to grab hold of a shinty stick or keener to go for goal.
In my mind's eye I see the cheery old man coming towards me on a cold, frosty morning wearing an old, faded hat that once was black, a tweed coat and with a grey oak walking stick in his hand. He sees his own son lose the shinty ball. "You weak creature!" says the father, lifting up his big coat and going nimbly after the ball holding the thin end of his walking stick and in a second the ball is in the furthest away goal. Then we are called in and the shinty sticks go under the table. The day's work is begun with an earnest prayer in gaelic. A section of the Bible is read and questions put. Then writing and arithmetic, arithmetic and writing till the end of the afternoon. A prayer to finish the school day then out with the shinty sticks again until it gets too dark to see.
Sad school, poor teaching, the reader will say. Sad schoolhouse, I say, and unfavourable teaching but teaching of a kind that might be followed to the benefit of many a school in the Highlands today (Professor MacKinnon wrote this essay in the late 19th Century). Bad housing and bad pay were the lot of many a Highland Schoolmaster in those days. There is good reason to be thankful that things have changed since then. Schoolmasters today bring skills and learning to their job that were not required of their predecessors. But I am not at all sure that some of our new schoolmasters would not do better if they were more ready to follow the customs of our old heroes. Amongst the old Highland Schoolmasters can be found some of the most learned men in the land. In the service of the S.P.C.K. and in schoolhouses that were little better than the one in Colonsay, they worked the most of their lives for 10 or 12 pounds sterling a year - including two of the finest ever writers in the gaelic language, Alasdair Mac Mhaighistir Alasdair and Dugald Buchanan.
Many of today's schoolmasters have different ideas from these men about teaching children. I am afraid that there is a growing belief that the particular aim of the schoolmaster is to earn as much money as he can from the school; and that children are well taught if they can read a language they do not understand, or if they can give 103,700,010 as the correct answer in an exam without they or the teacher having any idea what this number really means. Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are necessary in school - no pupil can do without them - but the duty of the schoolmaster does not end with them. Being of upright, well-bred character is as important - it might be said more important - than being educated. It is not the breadth of knowledge but good habits that are the aim of teaching.
" The tree you cannot twist,
You will not be able to uproot;
As its branches stretch
So its roots will be spreading."
It would be difficult for me to believe that Dugald Buchanan used one way for encouraging good growth in the tree in Church on the Sabbath and another way to twist it in school during the week. It was in the language that people understood that he preached his sermons and sang his songs to them: would he have taught his pupils differently? When Mac Mhaighistir Alasdair was encouraging the Highlanders to stand up for the Stuart cause he sang his famous song in the gaelic: do you think he would have used English to encourage a small child? "I would rather", said the Apostle Paul " say five words in Church (wouldn't the schoolmaster say 'in school'?) that would be understood than ten thousand in a foreign tongue. But many schoolmasters in the Highlands are of a different opinion. Isn't it sad when there are handsome schools being put up everywhere and the government paying a lot of money to train our schoolmasters if we have reason to say about the teaching we get in Highland schools, " Myself, I would prefer the old way!"
In the English introduction to the "Prose Writings of Donald MacKinnon" is included a sketch of the man by the Rev. Donald Lamont who knew him intimately, as follows:
" In private life Professor MacKinnon was the most hospitable and genial of men. He liked to have his friends coming to see him for talk and a game of whist. You had very little chance of winning the rubber against him but that did not matter. You had the talk and that was always the best of it. He had very keen sense of humour could say the funniest things in what was apparently a grim and serious vein; also he could size up a person's character in a moment. With mere bores, especially if they had a grievance against the Halls of Learning, he was not particularly patient but who can forget his patience with other odd characters who used to find their way to him or forget the droll reflections which he was wont to utter in their hearing? I never knew a man less fussy or less desirous of having his finger in every pie; he had a natural bent towards leisurely reflection and contemplative repose, and shrank from public appearances and speech-making. The Gaelic world did not always understand this side of him. No movement to advance the cause of the language or the people of the Highlands ever failed to elicit his sympathy and support but he preferred to give these in other ways than by appearing on a platform. He was not a ready speaker and was unfitted for public propaganda. But he was a true patriot, manly and honest and independent. Nothing so quickly roused him as the sneers of outsiders at our people and their tongue, except perhaps the spectacle of vainglorious people of various sorts exploiting his countrymen and their language for their own advantage and aggrandisement.
Equal to his great knowledge was his modesty. He was the most unassuming and unaffected of men, entirely free from vanity about his work and accomplishments and free from jealousy of other workers. He was simple in all his tastes and habits, generous and kind. Swagger, whether social or intellectual, was abhorrent to him. Nobody could doubt his sagacity or wisdom, and one always felt one's thoughts were clarified and decision became easier if one had talked things over with Professor MacKinnon."
Many thanks to Dion Alexander ("the potter") for the above article. The foundations of the old school have been identified a few yards inland of the cattle grid at Port Mor, although a march wall has been constructed through the middle of the building. The late Donald MacNeill noticed initials carved into the cliff behind it, presumably by the children, but it has not been possible to rediscover the exact spot as yet - Editor.
