An Unconventional Schoolmaster

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 20

An Unconventional Schoolmaster

4 4 4TJ 13" AIST'R/ hen Maist’r, here!’ —a hundred times a day we I / n must have called in every tone of childish feeling, sum- | k/ S moning him to settle grievances over slatepencils or hidden ‘shoclmd’ eggs, to look to the vagaries of the wag-at-e’-a’ or the home-made gas-jet, to admire our copperplate page of maxims, or that page of peace in the midst of the pious pricking proverbs: ‘October is the tenth month,’” writes “1.M.L.” in the “Scotsman.” “And now Death hits called ‘Maist’r here,’ and doubtless the Master has gone willingly enough to satisfy his last grand curiosity about the things eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived. "For it was curiosity of the best kind that made his obscure life so rich and full, curiosity about the world where he could grow corn and cut peats and dig ditches with his neighbours, curiosity about) the world of the past that he could discuss with his fellow-antiquarians and geologisls at the British Association meetings, and a profound curiosity about rhe corid of the spirit. "And this curiosity made him a remarkable teacher. In school lie held fast to a few formalities, but, for the rest, anything might happen. One day it might be a chemical experiment, a lesson on the indestructibility if matter, and a very small boy would run home, flying like a seamew over :he flagstone fences, breathless, but exultant. ‘Oh, Mother! Mother! Nothing s ever lost, nothing is ever lost,’ and so through all the entrancing story. “It might bo ‘Come hither, Evan Cameron,’ or ‘News of battle,’ •r 'The horseman riding at dead’ of night through the forest Braes o’ Mar,’

>r any of the grand wizardries of Scott. It might be singing up and down the Modulator,’ and then ‘The Auld Hoose,’ and ‘The Rowan Tree,’ and Wae’s Me for Prince Charlie.’ And it might be plain grammar or sums, but whatever came it was a surprise. “Then in the midst of these lessons, which were never so strictly disciplined that you could not whisper a ghost story or two about Lady Janet, or the Grey Lady, or about Old Jamie and the devil playing cards on

the churchyard wall, there would come a knock, a head would appear nt the door: ‘A swarm 1’

“Not another word was needed. The Master would seize his glengarry bonnet from the hook by the door, and in less than a minute the school would be empty and the garden wall covered with children; children who watched every movement of the bees, children who eyed the ripening black currants, and children who could catch from there a first faint glimpse of paradise.

“On some summer days there would bo Nature-rambles, with time to catch ‘branelsticks’ in the burn, to see the peaty water change your feet to amber, to wreathe your hat with creeping willow; time to find globe flowers and mimulus, sundew and butterwort, and to ask the Master again and again the name of Potentilla tormentilia for its sheer comicality. “There might even be time, if you were quick and your clothes scanty, for a bathe in the dam; one eye had to be on the Master’s receding back, and one on the hungry white horse drawing near the little mound that was your clothes, while legend said that the drawing of the dam might lead you into the mill-wheel; but the tremor ns your clothes touched your wet skin was worth the risks, and the Master, as he said ‘Pedicularis palustris’ to a proffered specimen, made no comment on your dripping hair. “No days stand out like these, except perhaps the day of the relief of Mafeking, when our photographs were taken, or the day of the sun’s eclipse when, our faces blackened with smoked glass, we saw wonders unrecorded by science, or the day after the Master’s return from the Soutn. where, we understood, he did mysterious things, and where he bought n present for everyone—books for the bairns, red-white-and-blue pencils, or dolls and engines to be cut from cardboard.

“And all this we took for granted, like the turnips in the fields, the mice-peas on the vetches, the cheesies in the thistles that grew for our eating, not knowing that these were uncommon ways in school life, and that the Master belonged to that little company who watch dally at Wisdom's gates and so shall inherit glory.”