The Girl from Galloway. Anne Doughty
She thought of her own very different walks to school in the softer green countryside of Galloway. There, the sea was almost always in sight, the fields a rich green, the school itself a sturdy, stone building with separate entrances marked Girls and Boys, and a patch of land at the back where the older boys learnt gardening.
She remembered Flora taking her by the hand on her first day and walking her briskly along the familiar lanes to the school where she herself had been a pupil some twelve years earlier.
Suddenly feeling sad, thinking of her brothers and sisters scattered ‘to the four winds’ as her father often said, she was glad when a girl in a tattered shift ran down from a nearby cottage and greeted them all cheerfully.
As Mary O’Donoghue fell in beside her, Hannah gathered her straying thoughts and asked the children how many scholars there currently were in their school.
Neither Rose nor Sam were very sure about the number, but Mary, a year or two older than Rose, was quite clear about it. There were fifteen on the roll, she said, when they were all there, but mostly they weren’t all there at the same time. She explained that often pupils couldn’t come if they were needed at home, for driving the cow to the fair or planting the tatties.
‘But that’s a good thing, Mrs McGinley,’ she went on, as Rose and Sam fell silent. ‘If they were all there, the wee ones would have to sit on creepies. Mr McGee doesn’t like that, but there’s only room for twelve on the chairs and benches.’
Hannah nodded her agreement. The low, homemade stools might be all right for listening to a story, but they certainly weren’t suitable for any written work, or even reading aloud comfortably. She was surprised that there could be any thought of fifteen in a kitchen not much bigger than her own.
Moments later, as they turned off the main track and walked the short distance up to Daniel’s house, she saw Daniel himself waiting near the open door. He was greeting each child as they appeared.
‘Hannah, you’re welcome,’ he said warmly, holding out his hand to her before she had even opened her mouth.
She was completely taken aback. Of course he knew her voice, and he was well known for knowing everyone’s footsteps, but how did he know she was there when she hadn’t yet said a word?
‘Good morning, Mary; good morning, Rose; good morning, Sam,’ he went on briskly, then, taking her arm, he led her towards the stone seat where he sat so often when the evenings grew lighter.
‘I’m heart glad you were able to come,’ he said, as the three children ran into the big kitchen that served as the classroom. ‘I’d be even more glad if you could see your way to helping me out, but we’ll not say a word about that yet. Marie is going to start the work indoors and then she’ll come out and tell you how we manage between us and what we each do. I don’t want to give you a false picture. It’s hard work, I confess, but then you’ve never been afraid of that or you wouldn’t have married your good man. Is he still working on that house up at Tullygobegley?’
*
They sat and talked as old friends do, for Daniel was one of the first people she had met when she came to Ardtur. Patrick had taken her to meet him one evening when they’d been back only a week or so. She’d found a house full of people, not one of whom she yet knew, but Daniel welcomed her warmly, made her sit beside him by the hearth and introduced her new neighbours one by one with a story about each of them, or a joke. Then he had told a long, traditional story after which he encouraged his visiting neighbours to sing, or to recite.
There followed many evenings at Daniel’s house before the children were born. When he had someone with a violin, or a penny whistle, he’d insist the young ones take the floor. Once, indeed, to please him, she had taken the floor herself with Patrick to learn ‘The Waves of Tory’.
She would never forget that evening: being passed from hand to hand by young men in shirtsleeves, dipping her head below raised arms, making an arch herself with a new partner, and all the time the lilt and dip of the music mimicking the flowing waves.
Hannah’s regular visits to Daniel were interrupted when she had her first miscarriage and then again when Patrick went back to Scotland. It was only a week after his departure when Daniel himself came to call on her. He told her that he still expected to see her, Patrick or no Patrick, whenever she could spare the time.
So she had walked up there on her own, or joined with another neighbour from Ardtur, for the long months when Patrick was away in Scotland. And so the year turned and Patrick returned. But it was only after two more miscarriages that she finally managed to carry Rose to full term. Then, there could be no more evening visits for her until Patrick was at home over the winter.
But Daniel made it clear that he was not prepared to be deprived of her company for all those long months. If she could not come to him in the evening because of little Rose, then he would come down and visit her in the afternoons. That is what he then did, almost every week.
Sometimes he brought a book and asked her to read to him, sometimes they just talked, but always he asked her about ‘home’, her father, her brothers and sisters, their lives, their travels and their families. Slowly and very intermittently, he told her something about his own unusual background and how he came to have a formal education that included Latin and Greek.
It was while Rose was still a baby that he came one afternoon to tell her of a decision he’d made. He said that since a young man who took pupils had left the adjoining townland quite unexpectedly, there was now no school anywhere nearby. He had decided that unless he did something himself, a generation of children would grow up on the mountainside who could neither read nor write. He was going to start a school and he needed her advice as well as her encouragement.
As the morning passed and the sun climbed higher, Hannah felt the warmth on her shoulders for the first time that year. Her spirits rose as, first Daniel, and then Marie, came to sit beside her on the stone bench a little way from the open door of the cottage, where the table and benches had now been rearranged and set up to serve as a schoolroom.
She was aware of the murmur of children’s voices. Like the hum of bees, it reflected the pattern of the morning’s activity, the sound oscillating but never intruding on the conversation she was having with whichever of the two teachers was sharing the stone bench with her.
It was Daniel who came first, joining her after he had conducted the roll call. She had heard him clearly as he called out the names and then less clearly as he asked his questions about the pupils who were missing. He explained later that he always asked those present about the absentees, whether they were needed at home, or on the land. If they were ill, then he wanted to know who was looking after them and whether there was any question of a doctor having to come.
Daniel’s first comments to Hannah when he joined her on the bench were on what they were trying to do with the children, encouraging them to speak out, to pay attention to other people, to ask questions and find out things for themselves. Marie, who came a little later, offered her detailed descriptions of each of the pupils, including Rose and Sam.
Hannah listened with growing interest and admiration. She was impressed by the way in which they dealt with the range of ages and abilities in the children who had come to them. There were several little girls barely five years old and some big boys already twelve. They were the ones most often absent if there were potatoes to be harvested or produce of any kind to go to market.
Daniel and Marie had managed to work out an overlapping pattern where the older children helped the younger ones and encouraged them to read aloud and recite the poems Daniel had taught them. At the same time, those who’d been present were asked to share what they’d been doing with those who’d been absent. Everyone was persuaded to talk about what they’d been doing at home, what visitors had called to see them and what answers they’d had to questions they’d been given by way of homework, things they could ask their parents, or