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.
[pg 25]
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[pg 26] 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[pg 27] 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[pg 28] 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.
[pg 29]
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[pg 30] 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[pg 31] 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[pg 32] 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.
