THE OLD DOMINIE
From the new cemetery, which is the highest point in Thrums, you just
fail to catch sight of the red schoolhouse that nestles between two
bare trees, some five miles up the glen of Quharity. This was proved
by Davit Lunan, tinsmith, whom I have heard tell the story. It was in
the time when the cemetery gates were locked to keep the bodies of
suicides out, but men who cared to risk the consequences could get the
coffin over the high dyke and bury it themselves. Peter Lundy's coffin
broke, as one might say, into the churchyard in this way, Peter having
hanged himself in the Whunny wood when he saw that work he must. The
general feeling among the intimates of the deceased was expressed by
Davit when he said:
"It may do the crittur nae guid i' the tail o' the day, but he paid
for's bit o' ground, an' he's in's richt to occupy it."
The custom was to push the coffin on to the wall up a plank, and then
let it drop less carefully into the cemetery. Some of the mourners
were dragging the plank over the wall, with Davit Lunan on the top
directing them, when they seem to have let go and sent the tinsmith
suddenly into the air. A week afterwards it struck Davit, when in the
act of soldering a hole in Leeby Wheens's flagon (here he branched off
to explain that he had made the flagon years before, and that Leeby was
sister to Tammas Wheens, and married one Baker Robbie, who died of
chicken-pox in his forty-fourth year), that when "up there" he had a
view of Quharity schoolhouse. Davit was as truthful as a man who tells
the same story more than once can be expected to be, and it is far from
a suspicious circumstance that he did not remember seeing the
schoolhouse all at once. In Thrums things only struck them gradually.
The new cemetery, for instance, was only so called because it had been
new once.
In this red stone school, full of the modern improvements that he
detested, the old dominie whom I succeeded taught, and sometimes slept,
during the last five years of his cantankerous life. It was in a
little thatched school, consisting of but one room, that he did his
best work, some five hundred yards away from the edifice that was
reared in its stead. Now dismally fallen into disrepute, often indeed
a domicile for cattle, the ragged academy of Glen Quharity, where he
held despotic sway for nearly half a century, is falling to pieces
slowly in a howe that conceals it from the high road. Even in its best
scholastic days, when it sent barefooted lads to college who helped to
hasten the Disruption, it was but a pile of ungainly stones, such as
Scott's Black Dwarf flung together in a night, with holes in its broken
roof of thatch where the rain trickled through, and never with less
than two of its knotted little window-panes stopped with brown paper.
The twelve or twenty pupils of both sexes who constituted the
attendance sat at the two loose desks, which never fell unless you
leaned on them, with an eye on the corner of the earthen floor where
the worms came out, and on cold days they liked the wind to turn the
peat smoke into the room. One boy, who was supposed to wash it out,
got his education free for keeping the schoolhouse dirty, and the
others paid their way with peats, which they brought in their hands,
just as wealthier school-children carry books, and with pence which the
dominie collected regularly every Monday morning. The attendance on
Monday mornings was often small.
Once a year the dominie added to his income by holding cockfights in
the old school. This was at Yule, and the same practice held in the
parish school of Thrums. It must have been a strange sight. Every
male scholar was expected to bring a cock to the school, and to pay a
shilling to the dominie for the privilege of seeing it killed there.
The dominie was the master of the sports, assisted by the neighbouring
farmers, some of whom might be elders of the church. Three rounds were
fought. By the end of the first round all the cocks had fought, and
the victors were then pitted against each other. The cocks that
survived the second round were eligible for the third, and the dominie,
besides his shilling, got every cock killed. Sometimes, if all stories
be true, the spectators were fighting with each other before the third
round concluded.
The glen was but sparsely dotted with houses even in those days; a
number of them inhabited by farmer-weavers, who combined two trades and
just managed to live. One would have a plough, another a horse, and so
in Glen Quharity they helped each other. Without a loom in addition
many of them would have starved, and on Saturdays the big farmer and
his wife, driving home in a gig, would pass the little farmer carrying
or wheeling his wob to Thrums. When there was no longer a market for
the produce of the hand-loom these farms had to be given up, and thus
it is that the old school is not the only house in our weary glen
around which gooseberry and currant bushes, once tended by careful
hands, now grow wild.
In heavy spates the children were conveyed to the old school, as they
are still to the new one, in carts, and between it and the dominie's
whitewashed dwelling-house swirled in winter a torrent of water that
often carried lumps of the land along with it. This burn he had at
times to ford on stilts.
Before the Education Act passed the dominie was not much troubled by
the school inspector, who appeared in great splendour every year at
Thrums. Fifteen years ago, however, Glen Quharity resolved itself into
a School Board, and marched down the glen, with the minister at its
head, to condemn the school. When the dominie, who had heard of their
design, saw the Board approaching, he sent one of his scholars, who
enjoyed making a mess of himself, wading across the burn to bring over
the stilts which were lying on the other side. The Board were thus
unable to send across a spokesman, and after they had harangued the
dominie, who was in the best of tempers, from the wrong side of the
stream, the siege was raised by their returning home, this time with
the minister in the rear. So far as is known this was the only
occasion on which the dominie ever lifted his hat to the minister. He
was the Established Church minister at the top of the glen, but the
dominie was an Auld Licht, and trudged into Thrums to church nearly
every Sunday with his daughter.
The farm of Little Tilly lay so close to the dominie's house that from
one window he could see through a telescope whether the farmer was
going to church, owing to Little Tilly's habit of never shaving except
with that intention, and of always doing it at a looking-glass which he
hung on a nail in his door. The farmer was Established Church, and
when the dominie saw him in his shirt-sleeves with a razor in his hand,
he called for his black clothes. If he did not see him it is
undeniable that the dominie sent his daughter to Thrums, but remained
at home himself. Possibly, therefore, the dominie sometimes went to
church, because he did not want to give Little Tilly and the
Established minister the satisfaction of knowing that he was not devout
to-day, and it is even conceivable that had Little Tilly had a
telescope and an intellect as well as his neighbour, he would have
spied on the dominie in return. He sent the teacher a load of potatoes
every year, and the recipient rated him soundly if they did not turn
out as well as the ones he had got the autumn before. Little Tilly was
rather in awe of the dominie, and had an idea that he was a
Freethinker, because he played the fiddle and wore a black cap.
The dominie was a wizened-looking little man, with sharp eyes that
pierced you when they thought they were unobserved, and if any visitor
drew near who might be a member of the Board, he disappeared into his
house much as a startled weasel makes for its hole. The most striking
thing about him was his walk, which to the casual observer seemed a
limp. The glen in our part is marshy, and to progress along it you
have to jump from one little island of grass or heather to another.
Perhaps it was this that made the dominie take the main road and even
the streets of Thrums in leaps, as if there were boulders or puddles in
the way. It is, however, currently believed among those who knew him
best that he jerked himself along in that way when he applied for the
vacancy in Glen Quharity school, and that he was therefore chosen from
among the candidates by the committee of farmers, who saw that he was
specially constructed for the district.
In the spring the inspector was sent to report on the school, and, of
course, he said, with a wave of his hand, that this would never do. So
a new school was built, and the ramshackle little academy that had done
good service in its day was closed for the last time. For years it had
been without a lock; ever since a blatter of wind and rain drove the
door against the fireplace. After that it was the dominie's custom, on
seeing the room cleared, to send in a smart boy--a dux was always
chosen--who wedged a clod of earth or peat between doorpost and door.
Thus the school was locked up for the night. The boy came out by the
window, where he entered to open the door next morning. In time grass
hid the little path from view that led to the old school, and a dozen
years ago every particle of wood about the building, including the door
and the framework of the windows, had been burned by travelling tinkers.
The Board would have liked to leave the dominie in his white-washed
dwelling-house to enjoy his old age comfortably, and until he learned
that he had intended to retire. Then he changed his tactics and
removed his beard. Instead of railing at the new school, he began to
approve of it, and it soon came to the ears of the horrified
Established minister, who had a man (Established) in his eye for the
appointment, that the dominie was looking ten years younger. As he
spurned a pension he had to get the place, and then began a warfare of
bickerings between the Board and him, that lasted until within a few
weeks of his death. In his scholastic barn the dominie had thumped the
Latin grammar into his scholars till they became university bursars to
escape him. In the new school, with maps (which he hid in the
hen-house) and every other modern appliance for making teaching easy,
he was the scandal of the glen. He snapped at the clerk of the Board's
throat, and barred his door in the minister's face. It was one of his
favourite relaxations to peregrinate the district, telling the farmers
who were not on the Board themselves, but were given to gossiping with
those who were, that though he could slumber pleasantly in the school
so long as the hum of the standards was kept up, he immediately woke if
it ceased.
Having settled himself in his new quarters, the dominie seems to have
read over the code, and come at once to the conclusion that it would be
idle to think of straightforwardly fulfilling its requirements. The
inspector he regarded as a natural enemy, who was to be circumvented by
much guile. One year that admirable Oxford don arrived at the school,
to find that all the children, except two girls--one of whom had her
face tied up with red flannel--were away for the harvest. On another
occasion the dominie met the inspector's trap some distance from the
school, and explained that he would guide him by a short cut, leaving
the driver to take the dog-cart to a farm where it could be put up.
The unsuspecting inspector agreed, and they set off, the obsequious
dominie carrying his bag. He led his victim into another glen, the
hills round which had hidden their heads in mist, and then slyly
remarked that he was afraid they had lost their way. The minister, who
liked to attend the examination, reproved the dominie for providing no
luncheon, but turned pale when his enemy suggested that he should
examine the boys in Latin.
For some reason that I could never discover, the dominie had all his
life refused to teach his scholars geography. The Inspector and many
others asked him why there was no geography class, and his invariable
answer was to point to his pupils collectively, and reply in an
impressive whisper--
"They winna hae her."
This story, too, seems to reflect against the dominie's views on
cleanliness. One examination day the minister attended to open the
inspection with prayer. Just as he was finishing, a scholar entered
who had a reputation for dirt.
"Michty!" cried a little pupil, as his opening eyes fell on the
apparition at the door, "there's Jocky Tamson wi' his face washed!"
When the dominie was a younger man he had first clashed with the
minister during Mr. Rattray's attempts to do away with some old customs
that were already dying by inches. One was the selection of a queen of
beauty from among the young women at the annual Thrums fair. The
judges, who were selected from the better-known farmers as a rule, sat
at the door of a tent that reeked of whisky, and regarded the
competitors filing by much as they selected prize sheep, with a stolid
stare. There was much giggling and blushing on these occasions among
the maidens, and shouts from their relatives and friends to "Haud yer
head up, Jean," and "Lat them see yer een, Jess." The dominie enjoyed
this, and was one time chosen a judge, when he insisted on the prize's
being bestowed on his own daughter, Marget. The other judges demurred,
but the dominie remained firm and won the day.
"She wasna the best-faured amon them," he admitted afterwards, "but a
man maun mak the maist o' his ain."
The dominie, too, would not shake his head with Mr. Rattray over the
apple and loaf bread raffles in the smithy, nor even at the Daft Days,
the black week of glum debauch that ushered in the year, a period when
the whole countryside rumbled to the farmer's "kebec"-laden cart.
For the great part of his career the dominie had not made forty pounds
a year, but he "died worth" about three hundred pounds. The moral of
his life came in just as he was leaving it, for he rose from his
deathbed to hide a whisky bottle from his wife.