I heard a blackie this morning as I went to school, and when I came near
to the playground I heard the girls singing. And I realised that Lenten
was come with love to Town.
The game was a jingaring, and Violet Brown was in the centre.
The wind and the wind and the wind blows high,
The rain comes pattering from the sky.
Violet Brown says she'll die
For the lad with the rolling eye.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She is the girl of the golden city;
She is counted one, two, three,
Oh! I wonder who he'll be.
Willie Craig says he loves her....
My own early experiences told me that Willie wasn't far off. Yes, there
he was at the same old game. When Vi entered the ring Willie began to
hammer Geordie Steel with his bonnet. But I could see Violet watch him
with a corner of her eye, and I am quite sure that she was aware that
the exertion of hammering Geordie did not account for Willie's burning
cheeks.
Then Katie Farmer entered the ring ... and Tom Dixon at once became the
hammerer of Geordie.
Poor wee Geordie! I know that he loves Katie himself, and I know that
between blows he is listening for the fatal "Tom Dixon says he loves
her."
I re-arranged seats this morning, and Willie is now sitting behind his
Vi, but Tom Dixon is not behind Katie. Poor despised Geordie is there,
but I shall shift him to-morrow if he does not make the most of his
chances.
* * *
This morning Geordie passed a note over to Katie, then he sat all in a
tremble. I saw Katie read it ... and I saw her blush. I blew my nose
violently, for I knew what was written on that sacred sheet; at least I
thought I knew.... "Dear Katie, will you be my lass? I will have you if
you will have me--Geordie."
At minutes I listened for the name when Katie went into the ring. It was
"Tom Dixon" again. I blew my whistle and stopped the game.
At dinner-time I looked out at the window, and rejoiced to see poor
Geordie hammering Tom Dixon. I opened the window and listened. Katie
was in the ring again, and I almost shouted "Hurrah!" when I heard the
words, "Geordie Steel says he loves her." But I placed Tom Dixon behind
Katie in the afternoon; I felt that I had treated poor Tom with
injustice.
To-night I tried to tackle Form 9b, but I could not concentrate. But it
wasn't Violet and Katie that I was thinking of; I was thinking of the
Violets and Katies I wrote "noties" to many years ago. I fear I am a bit
of a sentimentalist, yet ... why the devil shouldn't I be?
* * *
I have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my Qualifying
Class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village kirk. "And you must
explain away any rise or fall," I said.
Margaret Steel had a huge drop one Sunday, and her explanation was
"Special Collection for Missions." Next Sunday the congregation was
abnormally large; Margaret wrote "Change of Minister."
Few bairns have a sense of humour; their's is a sense of fun. Make a
noise like a duck and they will scream, but tell them your best joke
and they will be bored to tears.
I try hard to cultivate their sense of humour and their imagination. In
their composition I give them many autobiographies ... a tile hat, a
penny, an old boot, a nose, a tooth. To-day I asked them to describe in
the first person a snail's journey to the end of the road. Margaret
Steel talked of her hundred mile crawl, and she noted the tall forests
on each side of the road. "The grass would be trees to a snail," she
explained.
Poor Margaret! When she is fourteen she will go out to the fields, and
in three years she will be an ignorant country bumpkin. Our education
system is futile because it does not go far enough. The State should see
to it that each child has the best of chances. Margaret should be sent
to a Secondary School and to a University free of charge. Her food and
clothes and books and train fares should be free by right. The lassie
has brains ... and that is argument enough.
Our rulers do realize to a slight extent the responsibility of the
community to the child. It sends a doctor round to look at Margaret's
teeth; it may feed her at school if she is starving; it compels her to
go to school till she is fourteen. At the age of fourteen she is free to
go to the devil--the factory or the herding.
But suppose she did go to a Secondary School. What then? Possibly she
would become a Junior Student or a University Student. She would learn
much, but would she think? I found that thinking was not encouraged at
the university.
* * *
To-day I asked Senior I. to write up "A hen in the Kirk," and one or two
attempts showed imagination.
Is it possible that I am overdoing the imagination business? Shall I
produce men and women with more imagination than intellect? No, I do not
think there is danger. The nation suffers from lack of imagination; few
of us can imagine a better state of society, a fuller life.
Who are the men with great imagination?... Shelley, Blake, Browning,
Nietzsche, Ibsen, Tolstoy. These men were not content with life as it
was; they had ideals, and ideals are creatures of the imagination.
I once saw a book by, I think, Arnold Forster; a book that was meant to
teach children the meaning of citizenship. If I remember aright it dealt
with parliament and law, and local government.
Who was Arnold Forster? Why cannot our bairns have the best? Why tell
them all the stale lies about democracy, the freedom of the individual,
the justice of our laws? Are Forster's ideas of citizenship as great as
the ideas of Plato, of More, of Morris, of Wells? I intend to make an
abridgement of Plato's _Republic_, More's _Utopia_, William Morris's
_News from Nowhere_, Bacon's _A New Atlantis_, H. G. Wells' _A Modern
Utopia_, and _New Worlds for Old_.
Arnold Forster was with the majority. Nearly every day I quote to my
bairns Ibsen's words from _An Enemy of the People_.... "The Majority
_never_ has right on its side. _Never_ I say." Every lesson book shouts
aloud the words: "The majority is always right."
Do I teach my bairns Socialism? I do not think so. Socialism means the
owning of a State by the people of that State, and this State is not fit
to own anything. For at present the State means the majority in
Parliament, and that is composed of mediocre men. A State that takes up
Home Rule while the slums of the East End exist is a State run by office
boys for office boys ... to adapt Salisbury's description of a London
daily. We could not have Socialism to-day; the nation is not ripe for
it.
The Germans used to drink to "The Day"; every teacher in Britain should
drink daily to "The Day" when there shall be no poor, when factory
lasses will not rise at five and work till six. I know that I shall
never see the day, but I shall tell my bairns that it is coming. I know
that most of the seed will fall on stony ground, but a sower can but
sow.
* * *
I have been image-breaking to-day, and I feel happy. It began with
patent medicines, but how I got to them I cannot recollect. I remember
commencing a lesson on George Washington. The word hatchet led naturally
to Women's Suffrage; then ducks came up.... Heaven only knows how, and
the word quack brought me to Beans for Bibulous Britons. I told how most
of these medicines cost half a farthing to make, and I explained that
the manufacturer was spending a good part of the shilling profit in
advertising. Then I told of the utter waste of material and energy in
advertising, and went on to thunder against the hideous yellow tyre
signs on the roadside.
At dinner-time I read in my paper that some knight had received his
knighthood because of his interest in the Territorial Movement. "Much
more likely that he gave a few thousands to the party funds," I said to
my wondering bairns. Then I cursed the cash values that attach to almost
everything.
I am determined to tear all the rags of hypocrisy from the facts of
life; I shall lead my bairns to doubt everything. Yet I want them to
believe in Peter Pan, or is it that I want them to believe in the beauty
of beautiful stories? I want them to love the alluring lady Romance, but
I think I want them to love her in the knowledge that she is only a
Dream Child. Romance means more to the realist than to the romancist.
* * *
I wish I were a musician. If I could play the piano I should spend each
Friday afternoon playing to my bairns. I should give them Alexander's
Ragtime Band and Hitchy Coo; then I should play them a Liszt Rhapsody
and a Chopin waltz.
Would they understand and appreciate? Who knows what raptures great
music might bring to a country child?
The village blacksmith was fiddling at a dance in the Hall last night.
"Aw learnt the fiddle in a week," he told me. I believed him.
What effect would Ysaye have on a village audience? The divine melody
would make them sit up startled at first, and, I think, some of them
might begin to see pictures. If only I could bring Ysaye and Pachmann to
this village! What an experiment! I think that if I were a Melba or a
Ysaye I should say to myself:--"I have had enough of money and
admiration; I shall go round the villages on an errand of mercy."
The great, they say, begin in the village hall and end in the Albert
Hall. The really great would begin and end in the village hall.