Maggie Dow - Part A - Rambling Recollections of My School and School Days

Article XVII written by Alexander Gunn was published in the Northern Ensign on 17 November 1881 – Part A

Berriedale School

The school at Berriedale was a mixed school. Gentle and simple meet on a common footing. It was the only school between the Ord and Latheron. The young ladies from Achastle, the daughters of Mr Grieve, the overseer and factor for the estate, stood side by side with the daughters of Peter MacGungle, an Irishman who lived down at the shore, and the only Irishman, I suppose, in the county at the time. There was no respect of persons. All shared the same treatment at the hands of the teacher, and at the hands of our fellow-scholars. We all engaged in the same games, where each strove to outdo his neighbour.

The teachers and pupils of Scoraig School, 1897 Am Baile Facebook

We had a yearly Presbyterial examination of the school, when all did their best so as to carry away a prize, which consisted principally of Bibles or Testaments, and I believe the prizes were given more to please the parents than according to merit. There were not prizes enough for one to be given to each scholar, but they were equally divided, and those omitted one year go them the next, and that seemed to please everybody. There was one exception to this rule, in the case of a girl named Maggie Dow, daughter of John Dow of the Inn. She generally carried away a prize every year. She was possessed of a wonderfully retentive memory, and could repeat the Psalms from beginning to end without a single slip or mistake, and also could repeat any verse of any particular Psalm you wished. As might be expected she excelled in mental arithmetic.

Source: Land of Heather

My Comments:

While the three Rs were the core part of the curriculum, one of the main goals of Scottish schools at the time was on pupils being able to read the Bible and the Shorter Catechism. Prior to the Disruption in 1843 most schools were paid for by the Church of Scotland and were open to boys and girls regardless of social status. As we have seen in previous blogs, children educated in a Scottish school could get to University although I think the higher education opportunities applied more to young men than young women.

I can’t find a birth record for Maggie Dow but there are records for seven children of Mr John Dow the Innkeeper at Berriedale and his wife Margaret Munro, including one Maryanne born in 1822 (so a contemporary of Alexander Gunn). This may be the clever girl he refers to as Maggie. 

Roydhouse makes the following comments from his research of other letters of Alexander Gunn.

Of the school at Berriedale, surviving letters of early contemporary scholars describe both the building and the dominies of the period 1830 and forward to about 1850.

The building which was designated the 'School' (at Berriedale), must, I am inclined to think, have been intended for a crofter's dwelling. The school room was a small room with a couple of small windows facing to the south, and the one doorway at the eastern end. Adjoining the schoolroom were two rooms and a 'closet', the abode of the dominie. 

Small window at the Laidhay croft museum

The school furniture was of the most primitive description. There were three, or perhaps four, homemade, clumsy desks, each about eight feet long and three feet high, the desk top being steeply sloped. There were no fixings to the earth floor and be-times desks would fall over or get moved just as you were attempting to make a beautiful hair stroke (as we called them) in our copybook.'

'There was a single fireplace in the extreme end of the room, and in cold weather two or three pupils were permitted to warm themselves at the peat fire.

There was an old door key hanging on a nail at the window nearest the doorway. Where it came from I cannot tell. Anyone who asked to leave the room had to take the key with them and place it back on the nail when they returned. The idea of the 'key' business was instituted by one of the teachers who discovered that it was becoming a practice among pupils to ask out one after the other and thus enjoy themselves for a little time together and thereby slip uncongenial tasks. When the key was not on the nail by the window anyone asking liberty to leave the school had to wait until it was replaced.'

The schoolroom was perhaps a matter of twenty by twelve feet and was crowded by fifty or so scholars, and about 1845 the schoolroom was extended which gave more comfort - additional windows were provided and another fireplace added in the extension. The management of the school was lately in the hands of the parents of the scholars and the teacher.

The little school on the barren hillside at Berriedale saw the roll of fifty or so scholars augmented in the winter by some of the older lads - they attended school to be 'finished off' as it were; during the summer they were engaged in all kinds of work to augment the 'smaller livings' at home. Although advanced in years compared with the regular pupils, they were in no sense advanced in education and had to take their places in the classes often with mere bairns.'

This extract from the 1861 census shows Alexander McLeod (my great-grandfather) still a scholar at age 18

Nearly all our writing at school was done on slates and the scratch and scrape of the slate 'pencils' is a lasting memory of those days. 

Old slate

Our teachers as a whole gave us of their best and the marvel to me now is that considering all the disadvantages from which was suffered we made so great progress in our studies. After all there is something to be said for the old parochial system of education - which was a kind of hybrid between both the 'Education Board' and the parochial style it was devoid of the 'cram' of today; what one was taught was learned and remembered. I hardly think it probable that there was another school in the whole of the North that did not come under School Board management, but ours continued to be governed and worked on the primitive lines I have indicated for fifteen or more years after the passing of the Education Act of 1872. Yet, after all, some of the lads of those days are now occupying responsible positions in various spheres throughout the world.'

Source: Alan Roydhouse 1975 (unpublished) 

Berriedale School – Part A - Rambling Recollections of my Schools and School Days

Article XV written by Alexander Gunn was published in the Northern Ensign on 1 September 1881 Part A

The Berriedale school must have been somewhere
above the cemetery as Gunn talks of taking a peat
from below the burying ground, on the way to school.

Berriedale School 

“When Auchencraig was turned out, the school there was abandoned as the few families in Badbea who had children could not afford to support a school master, and there was no alternative but to send their children to Berriedale where there was a General Assembly school. It was just four miles from Badbea and in winter weather it was no treat to trudge away there every morning (Sunday excepted) and return home at night, call at the peat stack on the way home, fill the creel left there in the by-going in the morning, with peats, and carry it to the house to keep the fire burning and keep out the cold.”

The top right picture is John Gillies with his sons Calum and Ian carrying creels or baskets of peats on Eilean Fladday. It was taken over 100 years after the time Gunn is talking about yet, apart from the boy’s clothes, little has changed. Source: Am baile Facebook. 

Peat

“The school at Berriedale was a vast improvement on the one at Auchencraig, the walls being built with stone and lime and the roof slated, but an earthen floor. Fuel was supplied as at Auchencraig by each scholar bringing his peat with him under his “oxter” and depositing it in the “neuk” as he entered. This was done under the supervision of one of our number appointed to that important post, to see that none came minus their peat. A half or small sized peat was challenged at once and reported to the master who disposed of the case in favour of the overseer or otherwise, as the case might be.” 

Thou Shalt Not Steal

“The distance between Badbea and Berriedale was a great temptation to us in breaking the eighth commandment as we found it very irksome to carry a peat a distance of four miles, and have our sport on the way besides, and not unfrequently did we make a raid on the peat stack which stood at the mill at Berriedale  - which was under the charge of the miller of whom we were more in dread than of twenty policemen – or on a stack at the turn of the brae below the burying ground and belonging to some of the families living at Berriedale. We escaped capture in these cases wonderfully, but if by bad luck a capture was made the rod was not spared, and we could not blame them for it, for well we did know that we were doing wrong.”

A Gaelic Bible with the eighth commandment
and the shorter catechism in English and Gaelic

The Three R's

"Our teacher Murdoch Mackay, who, I am glad to know, is still alive and enjoying a small retiring allowance after having been a teacher for upward of 52 years, was a man of good principles and good sound common sense. He would by no means clear the guilty, but it could not be said that he punished his scholars unduly. The whole of the youths of school age from Dunbeath to Ousdale attended the Berriedale School. The three R’s were all that was taught except two or three of the better class of children, who were taught a smattering of Latin. A few more were taught the rules of grammar, and a modicum of geography. For my own part, and with the exception referred to, I never had a grammar or a geography in my hand, and even history was but very little taught. We had first, second, third and fourth books, the last of which had snatches of history interspersed through it. There was no standard book of history used in the school. The rules of arithmetic, as published in Gray’s book, were those which were in use. A very good book it was, and I believe there were as expert arithmeticians in those days who never saw any other, as there are in the present day, with all the advantages they enjoy in the way of new books, board schools, etc."

The leather bound book is “An Introduction to Arithmetic” by James Gray.

"I little thought when labouring through “the Grays,” as it was called, that I should afterwards come in contact with some of Mr Gray’s pupils. He was teacher in the burgh school of Peebles where he compiled his book."

No Saturday Holiday

"As stated in a previous chapter, we had no Saturday holiday in those days. We had to be as punctual at school on Saturday as any other day of the week. On that day we revised all the tasks or lessons we committed to memory during the course of the week, repeat the one half of the shorter catechisms, read a Bible lesson, and were dismissed about 10 o’clock. There was a Bible lesson every day, the first in the forenoon, and there was also a class for Gaelic, in which a lesson was given once a day. We had second, third, and fourth books in Gaelic. We were taught to translate the Gaelic into English, and the English into Gaelic, and also to spell Gaelic. I have in my bookcase a Gaelic Bible I got as a prize for Gaelic reading and spelling, and on it I find the inscription - “General Assembly School, Berriedale, 1^st April 1833."

My Comments:

Alexander Gunn has written about his school days at the Auchencraig school previously – see blog February 2016  - and his indignation at the clearance of the thriving fishing Auchencraig settlement -  blogs March 2015 and March 2016.

He has also mentioned his school master Murdoch Mackay again with obvious respect and warmth.  The appalling conditions the Mackay family endured after the disruption are on blog August 2015.

The Arithmetic book written by James Gray (1781 – 1810), schoolmaster of Peebles, was used universally in Scotland during the 19^th century making his name synonymous with Arithmetic.  Alexander Gunn lived in Peebles for a while and was apparently impressed to meet some of James Gray’s original pupils.

A PDF of Gray's Arithmetic can be found on electricscotland:

http://www.electricscotland.com/education/introductiontoar00grayrich.pdf