Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/165

 150 deprive Catholics—as such—altogether of the means of education.

But priests and schoolmasters and people combined all through the country—and not without some measure of success—to evade this unnatural law. Schools were kept secretly, though at great risk, in remote places—up in the mountain glens or in the middle of bogs. Half a dozen young men with spades and shovels built up a rude cabin in a few hours, which served the purpose of a schoolhouse: and from the common plan of erecting these in the shelter of hedges, walls, and groves, the schools came to be known as 'Hedge Schools.' These hedge schools held on for generations, and kept alive the lamp of learning, which burned on—but in a flickering ineffective sort of way—'burned through long ages of darkness and storm'—till at last the restrictions were removed, and Catholics were permitted to have schools of their own openly and without let or hindrance. Then the ancient hereditary love of learning was free to manifest itself once more; and schools sprang up all over the country, each conducted by a private teacher who lived on the fees paid by his pupils. Moreover, the old designation was retained; for these schools, no longer held in wild places, were called—as they are sometimes called to this day—'hedge schools.'

The schools that arose in this manner, which were of different classes, were spread all over the country during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. The most numerous were little elementary schools, which will be described farther on. The higher class of schools, which