HORNBOOK AND PRIMER
_To those who are in years but Babes I bow
My Pen to teach them what the Letters be,
And how they may improve their A. B. C.
Nor let my pretty Children them despise.
All needs must there begin, that would be wise,
Nor let them fall under Discouragement,
Who at their Hornbook stick, and time hath spent,
Upon that A. B. C, while others do
Into their Primer or their Psalter go._
--_A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rhimes for Children.
John Bunyan, 1686._
The English philosopher, John Locke, in his _Thoughts concerning
Education_, written in 1690, says the method of teaching children
to read in England at that time was always "the ordinary road of
Horn-book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible." These, he said,
"engage the liking of children and tempt them to read." The road was
the same in New England, but it would hardly be called a tempting
method.
The first book from which the children of the colonists learned
their letters and to spell, was not really a book at all, in our
sense of the word. It was what was called a hornbook. A thin piece
of wood, usually about four or five inches long and two inches wide,
had placed upon it a sheet of paper a trifle smaller, printed at
the top with the alphabet in large and small letters; below were
simple syllables such as ab, eb, ib, ob, etc.; then came the Lord's
Prayer. This printed page was covered with a thin sheet of yellowish
horn, which was not as transparent as glass, yet permitted the
letters to be read through it; and both the paper and the horn were
fastened around the edges to the wood by a narrow strip of metal,
usually brass, which was tacked down by fine tacks or nails. It was,
therefore, a book of a single page. At the two upper corners of
the page were crosses, hence to read the hornbook was often called
"reading a criss-cross row." At the lower end of the wooden back was
usually a little handle which often was pierced with a hole; thus
the hornbook could be carried by a string, which could be placed
around the neck or hung by the side.
[Illustration: Hornbook owned by Mrs. Anne Robinson Minturn]
When, five years ago, was published my book entitled _Customs and
Fashions in Old New England_, I wrote that I did not know of the
preservation of a single hornbook in America; though for many years
eager and patient antiquaries, of English and of American blood,
had vainly sought in American historical collections, in American
libraries, in American rural homes, for a true American hornbook;
that is, one studied by American children of colonial times. The
publication of my statement has made known to me three American
hornbooks. The first is the shabby little treasure owned by Mrs.
Anne Robinson Minturn of Shoreham, Vermont, found hidden under the
dusty eaves of a Vermont garret. The illustration shows its exact
size. On the back is a paper coarsely stamped in red with a portrait
of Charles II., king of England, on horseback. This may indicate its
age, but not its exact date. The young colonist who owned it was by
this print taught loyalty to the Crown, though in a far land.
The second hornbook is owned by Miss Grace L. Gordon of Flushing,
Long Island. It is a family heirloom, having come to its present
owner through a great-uncle who was born in 1782, and stated that it
was used by his father, who was born in 1736. The tablet is of oak,
and the back is covered with a red paper stamped with the design of
a double-headed eagle. The third, owned by Mrs. John W. Norton of
Guildford, Connecticut, is almost precisely like Miss Gordon's, and
is equally well preserved.
[Illustration: Hornbook owned by Miss Gordon]
From these shabby little relics and from thousands of their
ill-printed, but useful kinsfolk, childish lips in America first
read aloud the letters, pointed firmly out by a knitting needle
in some dame's hand. Undisturbed by kindergarten inductions and
suggestions, unbewildered by baleful processes and diagrams,
unthreatened by scientific principles of instruction, did the young
colonists stoutly shout their a-b abs, did they spell out their
prayer, did they read in triumphal chorus their criss-cross row.
Isn't it strange that these three lonely little ghosts of old-time
schooling should be the only representatives of their regiments of
classmates? Wouldn't it seem that tender association, or miserly
hoarding, or even forgetful neglect would have made some greater
salvage from the vast number of hornbooks sent to this country
in the century after its settlement; that by intent or accident
many scores would have survived? But these are all; three little
battered oaken backs and stubby handles, three faded paper slips, a
splintered sheet or two of horn, a few strips of brass tape, a score
of tiny hand-wrought nails--all poor things enough, but shaping
themselves into precious and treasured relics. Another of their
kindred, a penny hornbook, proved its present value at a sale in
London in 1893, by fetching the far from ignoble sum of sixty-five
pounds.
One of these little hornbooks filled in its single self what has
become a vast item in public school expenses. As Mr. Martin wittily
expresses it, "it was in embryo all that the Massachusetts statutes
now designate by the formal phrase 'text-books and supplies.'"
The knitting needle of the schooldame could be dignified by the
pompous name of fescue, a pointer; and something of that nature, a
straw, a pin, a quill, a skewer of wood, was always used to direct
children's eyes to letter or word.
There certainly were plenty of these humble little engines of
instruction in America; old Judge Sewall had them for his fourteen
children at the end of the seventeenth century, as we know from
his diary; he wrote in 1691 of his son Joseph going to school "his
cousin Jane accompanying him, carrying his horn-book." Waitstill
Winthrop sent them to his little Connecticut Plantation nieces in
1716. It is told of one zealous Puritan minister that hating the
symbolism of the cross he blotted it out of the criss-cross row of a
number of hornbooks imported to Boston.
[Illustration: Back of Hornbook]
"Gilt horns" were sold in Philadelphia with Bibles and Primers,
as we learn from the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ of December 4, 1760,
and in New York in 1753, so says the _New York Gazette_ of May 14,
of that year. Pretty little lesson-toys, these gilded horns must
have proved, but not so fine as the hornbooks of silver and ivory
used by young misses of quality in England. Scores of pictures by
seventeenth-century artists--on canvas and glass--show demure little
maids and masters with hanging hornbooks. Even the pictures of the
Holy Family show the infant Christ, hornbook in hand, tenderly
taught by the Virgin Mother.
The hornbook was called by other names, horn-gig, horn-bat,
battledore-book, absey-book, etc.; and in Dutch it was the
_a-b-boordje_. They were worked in needlework, and written in ink,
and stamped on tin and carved in wood, as well as printed, and Prior
tells in rhyme of a hornbook, common enough in England, which must
have proved eminently satisfactory to the student.
"To master John the English maid
A horn-book gives of gingerbread;
And that the child may learn the better,
As he can name, he eats the letter."
To this day in England, at certain Fairs and in Kensington
bake-shops, these gingerbread hornbooks are made and sold in spite
of the solemn warning of British moralists--"No liquorish learning
to thy babes extend." Still
"All the letters are digested,
Hateful ignorance detested."
I have seen in New England what were called "cookey-moulds," which
were of heavy wood incised with the alphabet, were of ancient Dutch
manufacture, and had been used for making those "koeckje" hornbooks.
[Illustration: The Royal Battledore]
The sight of an old hornbook must always be of interest to any
one of any power of imagination or of thoughtful mind, who can
read between the irregular lines, the ill-shapen letters, its true
significance as the emblem, the well-spring of English education
and literature. This thought of the symbolism of the hornbook is
expressed in quaint words on the back of a shabby battered specimen
of questionable age in the British Museum:--
"What more could be wished for even by a literary Gourmand under
the Tudors than to be able to Read and Spell; to repeat that
holy Charm before which fled all unholy Ghosts, Goblins, or even
the Old Gentleman himself, to the very bottom of the Red Sea;
to say that immortal Prayer which seems Heaven to all who _ex
animo_ use it; and to have those mathematical powers by knowing
units, from which spring countless myriads."
For a fuller account of the hornbook, readers should go to the
_History of the Hornbook_, by Andrew W. Tuer, two splendid volumes
forming one of the most interesting and exhaustive accounts of any
special educational topic that has ever been written.
The printed cardboard battledore was a successor of the hornbook.
This was often printed on a double fold of stiff card with a
third fold or flap lapping over like an old pocket-book. These
battledores were issued in such vast numbers that it is futile to
attempt even to allude to the myriad of publishers. An affine of the
hornbook is seen in the wooden "reading-boards" which were used a
hundred years ago in Erasmus Hall, the famous old academy built in
1786 in Flatbush, Long Island. It is still standing and still used
for educational purposes. These "reading-boards" are tablets of
wood, fifteen inches long, covered on either side with time-yellowed
paper printed in large letters with some simple reading-lesson.
The old fashioned long s in the type proves their age. Through a
pierced hole a loop of string suspended these boards before a class
of little scholars, who doubtless all read in chorus. Similar ones
bearing the alphabet are still used in Cornish Sunday-schools. They
were certainly used in Dutch schools, two centuries ago, as the
illustrations of old Dutch books prove.
[Illustration: "My New Battledore"]
A prymer or primer was specifically and ecclesiastically before
and after the Reformation in England a book of private devotions.
As authorized by the Church, and written or printed partially or
wholly in the vernacular, it contained devotions for the hours, the
Creed, Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, some psalms and certain
instructions as to the elements of Christian knowledge. These
little books often opened with the criss-cross row or alphabet
arranged hornbook fashion, hence the term primer naturally came
to be applied to all elementary books for children's use. A, B,
C, the Middle-English name for the alphabet in the forms apsey,
abce, absie, etc., was also given to what we now call a primer.
Shakespeare called it absey-book. The list in _Dyves Pragmaticus_
runs:--
"I have inke, paper and pennes to lode with a barge,
Primers and abces and books of small charge,
What Lack you Scollers, come hither to me."
[Illustration: Reading Board. Erasmus Hall]
The book which succeeded the hornbook in general use was the _New
England Primer_. It was the most universally studied school-book
that has ever been used in America; for one hundred years it was
_the_ school-book of America; for nearly another hundred years
it was frequently printed and much used. More than three million
copies of this _New England Primer_ were printed, so declares its
historian, Paul Leicester Ford. These were studied by many more
millions of school-children. All of us whose great-grandparents were
American born may be sure that those great-grandparents, and their
fathers and mothers and ancestors before them learned to read from
one of these little books. It was so religious in all its teachings
and suggestions that it has been fitly called the "Little Bible of
New England."
It is a poorly printed little book about five inches long and
three wide, of about eighty pages. It contains the alphabet, and a
short table of easy syllables, such as a-b ab, e-b eb, and words
up to those of six syllables. This was called a syllabarium. There
were twelve five-syllable words; of these five were _abomination_,
_edification_, _humiliation_, _mortification_, and _purification_.
There were a morning and evening prayer for children, and a grace to
be said before meat. Then followed a set of little rhymes which have
become known everywhere, and are frequently quoted. Each letter of
the alphabet is illustrated with a blurred little picture. Of these,
two-thirds represent Biblical incidents. They begin:--
"In Adam's fall
We sinned all,"
and end with Z:--
"Zaccheus he
Did climb a tree
His Lord to see."
In the early days of the Primer, all the colonies were true to the
English king, and the rhyme for the letter K reads:--
"King Charles the Good
No man of blood."
But by Revolutionary years the verse for K was changed to:--
"Queens and Kings
Are Gaudy Things."
Later verses tell the praise of George Washington. Then comes a
series of Bible questions and answers; then an "alphabet of lessons
for youth," consisting of verses of the Bible beginning successively
with A, B, C, and so on. X was a difficult initial letter, and had
to be contented with "Xhort one another daily, etc." After the
Lord's Prayer and Apostle's Creed appeared sometimes a list of names
for men and women, to teach children to spell their own names. The
largest and most interesting picture was that of the burning at the
stake of John Rogers; and after this a six page set of pious rhymes
which the martyr left at his death for his family of small children.
[Illustration: "MR. JOHN ROGERS, Minister of the Gospel in _London_,
was the first Martyr in Queen _Mary's_ Reign, and was burnt at
_Smithfield_, _February 14th 1554_. His Wife with nine small
Children, and one at her Breast, following him to the Stake; with
which sorrowful Sight he was not in the least daunted, but with
wonderful Patience died courageously for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
_Some_"
John Rogers]
After the year 1750, a few very short stories were added to its
pages, and were probably all the children's stories that many of the
scholars of that day ever saw. It is interesting to see that the
little prayer so well known to-day, beginning "Now I lay me down
to sleep," is usually found in the _New England Primer_ of dates
later than the year 1737. The _Shorter Catechism_ was, perhaps, the
most important part of this primer. It was so called in contrast
to the catechism in use in England called _The Careful Father and
Pious Child_, which had twelve hundred questions with answers. The
_Shorter Catechism_ had but a hundred and seven questions, though
some of the answers were long. Usually another catechism was found
in the primer, called _Spiritual Milk for Babes_. It was written
by the Boston minister, John Cotton, and it had but eighty-seven
questions with short answers. Sometimes a _Dialogue between Christ,
Youth, and the Devil_ was added.
The _Shorter Catechism_ was the special delight of all New
Englanders. Cotton Mather called it a "little watering pot" to shed
good lessons. He begged writing masters to set sentences from it to
be copied by their pupils; and he advised mothers to "continually
drop something of the Catechism on their children, as Honey from the
Rock." Learning the catechism was enforced by law in New England,
and the deacons and ministers visited and examined families to see
that the law was obeyed. Thus it may plainly be seen that this
primer truly filled the requisites of what the Roxbury school
trustees called "scholastical, theological, and moral discipline."