Medical Men. Sandy Wood.
Knox. Naim and Sir William Gull. A broken leg in Canna. Changes in the
professoriate and students in the Scottish Universities. A St. Andrews
Professor. A Glasgow Professor. Some Edinburgh Professors—Pillans,
Blackie, Christison, Maclagan, Playfair, Chalmers, Tait. Scottish
Schoolmasters.
Among the professions
that of medicine has long held a high place in Scotland. Its reputation
at home and abroad has been maintained for a century and a half by a
brilliant succession of teachers and practitioners. The schools of
medicine in Edinburgh and Glasgow continue to attract students from all
quarters of the British Islands, and from our colonies. Every year
hundreds of medical graduates are sent out from the Universities, and
they are now to be found at work in almost every corner of the wide
globe.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century one of the noted medical
characters in Edinburgh was the surgeon eulogised by Byron in the
couplet:
Oh! for an hour of him who knew no feud,
The octogenarian chief, the kind old Sandy Wood.
He was greatly admired for his medical skill, and beloved for his kindly
nature. His popularity saved him once from instant death. During a riot,
the mob, mistaking him for the provost, were preparing to pitch him over
the North Bridge, when he shouted out to them, ‘I’m lang Sandy Wood; tak’
me to a lamp and ye’ll see.’ He used to take a constitutional walk to
Restalrig in the evenings, and frequently met a tailor carrying a
bundle, whom he invariably saluted with, ‘Weel, Tam, are ye gaun hame wi’
your wark?’ The tailor rather resented this monotonous enquiry, and one
day he had his revenge. Noticing the tall figure of the well-known
surgeon walking at the end of a funeral procession, he instantly made up
to him to ask, ‘ Weel, doctor, are ye gaun hame wi’ your wark ? ’
Rather later came the times of Burke and Hare, with the terrors of the
resurrectionists. A prominent individual in Edinburgh at that time was
Robert Knox the anatomist, to whose dissecting room the bodies of the
victims murdered in the West Port were sold. He was for many years a
successful lecturer, but afterwards got into difficulties, when he tried
to retrieve his position by announcing courses of lectures, or a single
lecture on a sensational subject. When one of the teachers in the
medical school, who had introduced the practice of illustrating his
lectures with models, was discoursing on the anatomy of the ear, Knox
posted up a notice that on a certain day he too would give a lecture on
the human ear, illustrated with the modern methods of demonstration.
When the day came, the lecture-room was crowded with students on the
outlook for amusement. The lecturer began his demonstration by holding
up an ear, which he had obtained from a human subject, and pointing out
the leading features in its structure. At a particular part of his
lecture he gave a signal, and the door behind him was opened by two men
who carried in a monstrous and grotesquely shaped model of an ear. It
was set down on the table, and in a little while Knox, holding up the
ear he had already exhibited, said, ‘ This, gentlemen, is the human ear
according to God Almighty, and that (pointing to the huge model), and
that is the human ear according to Dr. .’
There was once a good deal of rivalry between the medical staff of the
Universities and the extra-mural schools of medicine. On one occasion, a
University professor, wishing to make fun at the expense of a
distinguished member of the non-university school, told a story of a man
who consulted a famous surgeon as to constant pains in the head. The
surgeon pronounced that the complaint could be completely cured by the
removal of the brain and the excision of some diseased parts. The man
consented to the operation, and was told to come back in ten days, when
the renovated brain would be ready for him. The ten days elapsed,
however, and gradually grew into three weeks without the patient having
returned. At the end of that time the surgeon met him on the street, and
anxiously enquired why he had never re-appeared. The man answered that,
since the operation, he had obtained a government appointment, and
thought that as he was getting on very well without the brain, he had
better remain as he was. A titter of course went through the audience,
in the midst of which the extramural lecturer, against whom the tale was
pointed, rose and calmly said, ‘May I enquire of the speaker whether the
crown appointment in question was a University professorship?' The laugh
was thus most effectively turned the other way.
A medical professor having been appointed Physician to Queen Victoria,
the announcement of this honour was written up on the blackboard of his
class-room just before the hour of lecture. A wag among the students,
seeing this notice, wrote in large letters underneath it—‘God save the
Queen!’
It is not unusual for medical men to have two practices, one in this
country, and one abroad. A man may attend a circle of patients during
the summer in London, at Harrogate or in the north of Scotland, and
another circle during the winter on the Riviera, in Italy or in Egypt.
One able physician, for example, had an excellent practice for half of
the year at Nairn and for the other half in Rome. He was on a friendly
footing with Sir William Gull, whose patients, worn out with the
distractions of London, were sent up to him to be looked after in the
salubrious climate of the Moray Firth. A lady resident of Nairn, who
believed herself to be far from well, and to be suffering from some
complaint which the local doctor did not understand, insisted upon going
to London and consulting Sir William Gull. That eminent physician
diagnosed her case and prescribed; 'What you chiefly require, madam' he
said, 'is to live for a time in a dry bracing climate. There is one
place which I am sure would suit you admirably, and that is Nairn in the
north of Scotland.’
One of the difficulties of life among the smaller islands of the
Hebrides has long been the inadequacy of medical attendance." A stranger
who first enters the region, and realises from some painful experience
what are the conditions of the people in this respect, may be forgiven
if at first he may be inclined to think that the authorities, whose duty
it should be to provide such attendance, share the opinion of Churchill
that—
The surest road to health,
say what they will,
Is never to suppose we shall be ill.
Most of those evils we poor mortals know
From doctors and imagination flow.
It must be remembered,
however, that many of the islands are too small, and many of the
districts too thinly inhabited to provide work for a resident
practitioner, even if the funds for his salary were readily procurable.
All that has hitherto been attempted is to place a doctor in some
central position whence, commanding as wide an area as he can be
supposed able to undertake, he may be ready to proceed to any case where
his services may be required. But the distances are sometimes
considerable, and the weather often stormy, so that for days at a time
no boat can pass from one island to another. Even under the most
favourable skies, it often happens that when a message arrives, urgently
requesting the attendance of the medical man, he is found to be engaged
with another serious case in an island some leagues distant, from which
he may not be expected to return for some days. An instance which
happened a few years ago in the little island of Canna will illustrate
this feature of social life in the Inner Hebrides.
One of the workmen engaged in building a dry-stone dyke met with a
serious accident. The materials he had to use consisted of large rounded
boulders and blocks of basalt, which required some little care to adjust
in order that the structure might remain firm. When the wall had been
raised to its full height, a portion of it gave way, and some large
masses of heavy basalt fell on the workman, smashing one of his legs.
His companions on extricating him from the ruins, saw the serious nature
of the injuries. But there was no doctor on the island, nor anywhere
nearer than at Arisaig, a distance of some twenty-five miles across an
open sea. No time was lost in getting the poor man carried into a boat,
which two of his comrades navigated to the mainland. On arriving there,
however, they found that the doctor had gone away inland and would not
be back for a day or two. As there was no time to lose, the boatmen at
once set out for Tobermory in Mull, where the next medical man was to be
obtained. They had to traverse a tract of sea which is often rousfh.
Even in calm weather more or less commotion may always be looked for in
the water round the Point of Ardnamurchan— the ‘headland of great
waves.’ It was some thirty-six hours after the accident before the poor
sufferer was at last placed in medical hands. The first thing to be done
was, of course, to amputate the mangled leg. The patient stood the
operation well, and in two or three weeks was sufficiently recovered to
be able to be taken back to Canna. His two faithful comrades, who had
waited on with him at Tobermory, had him carried down to the pier, where
their boat was ready for him, When he came there he looked all round him
with some anxiety, and at last exclaimed, ‘But where’s my leg?’ ‘Your
leg! in the kirkyard, to be sure.’ ‘But I maun hae my leg.’ ‘ But I tell
ye, ye canna hae your leg, its been buryit this fortnicht in the
graveyard.’ ‘Weel’ said the lameter, steadying his back against a wall,
‘I’ll no stir a fit till I get my leg. D’ye think I’m to gang
tramp-tramping aboot at the Last Day lookin’ for my leg.’ Finding
persuasion useless, the unhappy boatmen had to interview the minister
and the procurator-fiscal, and obtain authority to dig up the leg. When
the lost limb came up once more to the light of day, it was in such a
state of decomposition that the men refused to have it in the boat with
them. Eventually a compromise was effected. A second boat was hired to
convey the leg, and with a length of ten yards of rope between them, was
towed at the stern of the first. In this way the procession reached
Canna.
Throughout the Highlands the desire to be buried among one’s own kith
and kin remains wide-spread and deep-seated. And it would also appear
that a Highlander cannot bear that the parts of his body should be
interred in different places. The Canna dyke-builder only gave
expression to the general feeling.
In due time the natives felt it necessary to celebrate in an appropriate
way the recovery and return of their fellow-islander, and the
re-interment of the leg in its native soil. With an ample provision of
whisky, a banquet was held, and continued till a late hour. On the way
back from this orgy, the hero of the accident stumbled across a heap of
stones, and broke the wooden leg that had replaced his own. Partly from
this fresh accident, but largely, no doubt, from the effects of the
debauch, the man could not regain his cottage, but lay where he fell
until, in the morning light, he was picked up and helped home.
That gradual modification of the national characteristics which is
observable in all parts of the social scale, has not allowed the
Universities to escape. On the one hand, the professoriate is now
constantly recruited from the south side of the Tweed, by the selection.
More ludicrous still was the desire of the Highland porter in Glasgow
who, as Dr. Norman Macleod relates, ‘sent his amputated finger to be
buried in the graveyard of the parish beside the remains of his kindred.
It is said also that a bottle of whisky was sent along with the finger,
that it might be entombed with all honour.’ either of Englishmen or of
Scotsmen who have been trained at the English universities. On the other
hand, a considerable proportion of the students, more particularly in
medicine, come from England, Wales, Ireland, and the colonies; some of
them even hail from the Continent and from India.1 As the non-Scottish
leaven thus introduced has no doubt tended to enlarge the culture of the
teachers and perhaps to soften the asperities of manner in the taught,
the change has been welcomed. The reproach that used to be levelled at
the nation that it was too clannish and acted too much on the principle
of its own unsavoury proverb of ‘ keeping its ain fish-guts for its ain
sea-maws,’ certainly cannot justly be brought against its educational
institutions. For many years the obvious and earnest endeavour has been
to secure the best men, no matter from what part of the globe they may
come. The gradual obliteration of the peculiarly Scottish
characteristics of the Professors and students is part of the price to
be paid for the general advancement. Yet we pay it with a certain
measure of regret. There was a marked originality and individuality
among the Professors of the older type, which gave a distinctive
character to the colleges where they taught, and in some degree also to
their teaching.
The statistics for Edinburgh University during 1903 show that of the
1451 students of medicine 677 or over 46 per cent, belonged to Scotland;
333, or nearly 23 per cent., were from England and Wales; 118 from
Ireland; 72 from India; 232, or about 16 per cent., from British
Colonies; and 19 from foreign countries.
About the middle of last century the Professor of Mathematics in the
University of St. Andrews was an able mathematician and a singularly
picturesque teacher. He spoke not only with a Scottish accent, but used
many old Scottish words, if they were effective in making his meaning
clear. If, for instance, he noticed an inattentive student, looking
anywhere but at the black-board on which he was demonstrating some
proposition, he would stop and request the lad to ‘ e’e the buird ’
(look at the board). He lectured in a dress suit, and as he always wiped
his chalky fingers on his waistcoat, his appearance was somewhat
brindled by the end of the hour. One of his old students gave me the
following recollection of an incident that took place in the classroom.
A certain student named Lumsden was one day conspicuous for his
inattention. The professor at last stopped his lecture, and addressed
the delinquent thus: ‘Mr. Lumsdeil, will you come forrit here and sit
down on that bench there in front o’ me. I have three reasons for moving
you. In the first place, you’ll be nearer my een ; in the second place,
you’ll be nearer my foot; and in the third place, you’ll be nearer the
door.’
Among the Glasgow professors towards the middle of the century, one with
a marked individuality was Allan Maconochie, afterwards Maconochie Wei
wood. Coming- of a race of lawyers, for he was the son of one Scottish
judge and the grandson of another, he took naturally to the bar, and
became Professor of Law in 1842. Being prompt and decisive in his
business habits, he soon acquired a considerable practice as referee and
arbiter in disputed cases among the mercantile community of Glasgow, and
thus saved the disputants the long delays and heavy expenses of the
Court of Session. He gave himself up with much energy to the work of his
chair, and to college business during the session, but as soon as the
winter term was over, he used to depart at once for the Pyrenees, where
he possessed a chateau, and where he would spend most of his time until
he had to resume his professional labours in this country. During these
years of residence abroad, he acquired facility in speaking Spanish, and
he would make long solitary excursions, mingling freely among the
people.
In the year 1854 his father, Lord Meadow-bank, succeeded to the Fife
estates of Garvock and Pitliver, and then took the surname of Welwood.
About the same time the reform of the Scottish universities began to be
mooted, and as the professor looked forward with much dislike to some of
the proposed innovations in the constitution and arrangements of these
institutions, he resigned his chair and established himself as a country
gentleman at Pitliver, near Dunfermline. Having lost his first wife, he
had lately married Lady Margaret Dalrymple, daughter of the Earl of
Stair. I was a frequent guest at Pitliver, and much enjoyed his racy
reminiscences of Glasgow and of his experiences in Spain. One of these
last which he told me seems worthy of now being put on record as an
instance of the courage and boldness of a peaceable Scottish professor.
During the ‘forties’ of last century, Spain was convulsed with
revolution. Maconochie had a strong desire to travel through some of the
disturbed districts and see the state of the country for himself. He
accordingly arranged to make a long detour and cross the frontier to a
French town, where his wife was to await his coming. Disguising himself
as a miner, he procured a bag, a pick, and a few pieces of rough stone.
His money he carried with him in gold, which he enclosed in lumps of
plaster of Paris, coloured and dirtied to look like bits of natural
rock. Thus accoutred he set out on his journey, and passed through the
districts where the insurrection was hottest. At night he would come
into a village inn, filled with insurgents, and throwing his bag into a
corner would retire to see after his horse. Coming back to the chamber
where the warriors were assembled, he sometimes found them examining the
contents of his bag and holding some of his specimens in their hands,
with an exclamation about their weight—‘Plomo, plomo’; they were sure
the stones must be bits of lead-ore. He would then join in the talk, and
so disarm all suspicion of his nationality that he had no difficulty in
gathering from them all the information he wanted, while they on their
side took him for a Castilian miner prospecting through the country for
metals.
In this way he travelled through all the tract he wished to see, and had
come at last to the Spanish town nearest to the frontier place where he
was to meet his wife. He now discarded his disguise, and attired himself
in ordinary costume. The horse that had carried him was a sorry nag
which he had chosen to be in harmony with the general outfit of his
supposed occupation. He now made himself known to the mayor of the town
and asked his assistance to procure a good horse. It so happened that a
fine animal, which had belonged to a government official recently
deceased, was for sale, but the price asked for it was beyond the means
of those who would fain have bought it. The professor, however, had
money enough with him to acquire the horse, and to fit himself for the
rest of his journey. A guide was procured to conduct him through the
mountains, and he was advised to go armed and to be constantly on his
guard. In particular, he was warned on no account to stop at the top of
the last pass, whence the road descended in sharp zig-zags into the
plain of France. All went well until he came to that very place, when
his guide said they must halt a little. This he refused to do, but
insisted on his companion riding on in front of him. They had not „ gone
far down when voices from above called on them loudly to stop. The guide
turned round, put his horse across the narrow road, and on Maconochie
trying to brush past him drew out a pistol from his belt. The professor,
suspecting some action of this kind, was on the alert, with his hand
already on his own pistol, which he at once discharged at the breast of
the guide, who rolled off his horse into the bushes below. Realising now
the plot against him, and that there were accomplices above, he put
spurs to his horse, and dashed down the road. So steep was the descent,
and so shaded with trees and bushes, that he could only be seen at the
bends, at each of which a shower of bullets whizzed past him. He
succeeded in keeping ahead of his assailants, who continued to pursue
and fire at him until they were almost within gunshot of the French
sentries.
As soon as he arrived at the town, he sought the commandant and told his
story. The officer, on learning where he had got his horse, told him
that he owed his life to the animal, not merely for its speed. It
appeared that the insurgents knew the horse well, and desired to procure
it for one of their leaders. When they heard that it had been sold, they
had evidently planned to possess themselves of it, and had arranged the
ambush to which the professor of law had nearly fallen a victim. But it
was the horse they wanted, not its rider. Had mere robbery been their
object, they could easily have shot the horse, and whether or not they
put a bullet through him also, they would have stripped him of all his
possessions. But they purposely fired high for fear of wounding or
killing the animal, which they had expected to be able to present to
their leader.
Robert Chambers used wittily to classify mankind in two divisions—those
who had been ‘under Pillans,’ and those who had not. I am glad to be
able to range myself in the first class. Pillans was Professor of Latin
(or Humanity as the subject used to be termed in Scotland) in the
University of Edinburgh. Perhaos his name was most widely known from its
having been unwarrantably pilloried by Byron in his E uglish Bards and
Scotch Reviewers. He was a born educationist, far in advance of his time
in certain departments of teaching, more particularly in his recognition
of the place that should be assigned to geography in the educational
system of the country. When I sat in his class-room he had reached his
seventy-seventh year, and was no longer as able as he had once been to
control a large gathering of lads fresh from school. But even then no
one who was willing to learn could fail to find much that was suggestive
in his prelections. As he sat in his chair behind his desk, his small
stature was not observable. One only saw the round bald head, the
rubicund cheeks, the mild blue eyes, the hands wielding a huge reading
glass (for he would never consent to wear spectacles) and the shoulders
wrapped round in his velvet-collared black gown. He was a scholar of the
antique type, more intent on the subject, spirit, and style of his Latin
favourites, than on grammatical niceties or various readings. How he
loved his Horace, and how he took to his heart any student in whom he
could detect the rudiments of the same affection! Having gained his
friendship in this way, I saw a good deal of him in later years. He kept
up the pleasant old custom of asking his students to breakfast with him.
In later years I met some of his early friends at that meal, among them,
Leonard Horner. I remember one morning having a talk with him about
English literature, when he said, ‘ I have been all my life fond of
poetry, and I find great solace in it still. But I must go back several
generations for what really interests and pleases me. There is Tennyson,
and another writer, Browning, that I hear people raving about. I have
tried to read them, but I confess that I cannot understand much of them,
and they give me no real pleasure. When I want to enjoy English verse, I
go back to the masterpieces of Dryden and Pope.’ Pillans was one of the
early pioneers in the organisation of infant-schools. He energetically
combated the system of teaching by rote, and of compelling young
children to burden their memories with genealogies and dates. He once
remarked to me, ‘ I was in an infant-school lately, and you won’t guess
what question I heard put to a class of little' tots, not more than four
or five years old— “How long did Jeroboam reign over Israel?”’ The most
perfervidly Scottish professor of my time was undoubtedly John Stuart
Blackie, who taught a multifarious range of subjects, including some
Greek, of which he was Professor. Although those of his students who
really wanted to increase their knowledge of Greek would fain have been
spared some of his disquisitions on the current politics or problems of
the day, they could not but recognise his boundless enthusiasm, his
cheery good nature, and his high ideals of life and conduct. In my time
he wore a brown wig, which was so manifestly artificial that we used
sometimes to imagine that it was coming off, and speculated on what the
professor would be like without it. But in later years he allowed his
own white hair to grow long, and with his clean-shaven face, his broad
soft felt hat, and his brown plaid over his shoulders, he became by far
the most picturesque figure in the Edinburgh of his time. He had been so
much in Germany, and was so well versed in German life and literature,
that he seemed naturally to assume the manner of a German professor.
There was, indeed, a good deal of external resemblance between him and
the late venerable historian Mommsen. But Blackie was distinguished from
his more typical continental brethren by the boisterous exuberance of
his spirits. Even in the classroom this feature could not be wholly
repressed, but it reached its climax among friends at a dinner table,
more especially at such gatherings as those of the Royal Society Club.
After eloquent talk he would eventually be unable to remain seated, but
would start up and march round the room, gesticulating and singing a
verse of some Scottish song, or one of his own patriotic ditties.
Besides the genial Blackie, the Senate of Edinburgh University, when I
was a member of it, contained some other less vociferous but extremely
clubbable professors. Two of them deserve special mention here—Christison
and Maclagan. Sir Robert Christison was excellent company, with his
ample fund of reminiscence and anecdote. At the club-dinners Sir Douglas
Maclagan never failed to regale us with one of his inimitable songs. He
had a good voice, and sang with much expression and humour. His ‘ Battle
of Glen Tilt’ was a source of endless pleasure to his friends, and he
entered so thoroughly into the spirit of it that one could almost see
the scene between the duke and his gillies on the one side, and the
botany professor and his students on the other. Some of the touches in
that ditty are full of sly fun, such, for example, as the description of
the botanising:
Some folk’ll tak’ a heap o’ fash For unco little en’, man;
An’ meikle time an’ meikle cash For nocht ava’ they’ll spen’, man.
Thae chaps had come a hunder’ mile For what was hardly worth their
while;
’Twas a’ to poo Some gerse ,that grew _ On Ben M‘Dhu That ne’er a coo
Would care to pit her mouth till,
On rare occasions Christison and Maclagan sang a humorous duet in the
most dolorous tones, acting the character of two distressed seamen
begging on the street. It was comical beyond description.
Another of the luminaries in the Edinburgh University was Lyon Playfair,
professor of chemistry, who, after quitting his chair and entering
parliament, devoted himself mainly to politics, and was finally raised
to the peerage. He too was a true Scot, though most of his life was
passed in England. He enjoyed and could tell a good story, and relished
it none the less if it bore against himself. In his later years he used
to pay a yearly visit to America, and from one of these journeys he
brought back the account of an experience he had met with among the
Rocky Mountains of Canada, and which he would tell with great vivacity.
He had halted at some station on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in
the course of a stroll had made his way to the foot of a heap of
material that had been tumbled down from the mouth of a mine. He was
poking out some of the pieces of stone with his stick, when a voice
saluted him from the top of the bank, and the following conversation
ensued;
‘Hey! what are ye daein’ there?’
‘I am looking at some of these bits of stone.’
‘But there’s nae allooance here.’
‘Is there not? I think you must be a Scotsman like me.’
‘Ay! man, and are ye frae Scotland? And what’s your name?’
‘My name is Playfair.’ ,
‘Maybe ye’ll be Lyon.’
‘Yes, that’s my name. How do you come to know it?’
‘Od, man, your name has travelt far faurer nor thae wee legs ’ll ever
carry yoursell.’ When at the time of the Disruption the theological
chairs were resigned by the professors who seceded to the Free Church,
the classes of the new College which that church established in
Edinburgh were held in a house next door to a well-known dentist Dr.
Chalmers was one of those who had left the University, and he had an
enthusiastic body of students in the new rooms. The applause with which
they greeted the Professor’s bursts of eloquence proved, however, rather
trying to the dentist and his patients, for the house partitions were
none of the thickest. The story is told that a polite note was sent to
Dr. Chalmers, asking whether it would be possible for him to moderate
the noise made by his pupils. Next day the doctor, before beginning his
lecture, explained the circumstances to his class, and begged them to
remain quiet, ‘for' he added, ‘you must bear in mind that our neighbour
is very much in the mouth of the public.’
The late Professor Tait, so widely known and so affectionately
remembered, used to cite one of the answers he received in a
class-examination. The question asked was, ‘Define transparency,
translucency and opacity,’ and the following was the answer. ‘I am sorry
that I cannot give the precise definition of these terms. But I think I
understand their meaning, and I will illustrate it by an example. The
windows of this class-room were originally transparent; they are at
present translucent, but if not soon cleaned, they will become opaque.’
The professor, in repeating this reply, laughingly said that he had
allowed the man full marks for it.
The Scottish schoolmaster of the old type is probably as extinct as the
parish school system under which he flourished. What with revised codes,
inspectors, examinations, grants in aid, Board of Education and other
machinery, the educational arrangements of Scotland have during the last
half-century been transformed to a remarkable degree. There can be no
doubt that on the whole, and especially in recent years, the changes
have been in the right direction. Nevertheless, we may regret the
disappearance of some of the characteristic features of the old regime.
The parish schools served to commingle the different classes of the
community, and there was a freedom left to the teachers which gave them
scope in their methods and range of subjects, and enabled them to send
up to the university numbers of clever and well-trained scholars.
Untrammelled by the fear of any school-board or Education Department,
the ‘dominie’ was left to develop his own individuality, which, though
it sometimes took the form of eccentricity, was in most cases the
natural outgrowth of a cultivated mind, and was a distinct benefit to
his pupils. In the delightful Memories Grave and Gay of Dr. Kerr, who
has spent his active life in practically furthering the cause of
education in the country, an interesting account is given of the process
of transformation, together with many, anecdotes of his experience of
country schools and country schoolmasters.
To his ample stores those interested in the subject should turn.
In the early days of examinations an inspector came to a school, and in
the course of the reading stopped to ask the class the meaning of the
word curfew in Gray’s line:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
There was complete silence in the room. He tried to coax the boys on to
an answer, but without effect; until the teacher, losing patience with
them, exclaimed in vexation, ‘Stupit fules! d’ye no ken what’s a
whatip?’ whaup being Scottice for curlew.
A clerical friend of mine was, many years ago, visiting a parish school
in Argyleshire where Gaelic was taught as well as English. He spoke to
them in Gaelic, and asked them to spell one of the words he had used.
They looked in blank amazement at him, and gave no reply. At last the
master, turning round deprecatingly to the clergyman, said, ‘ Oich, sir,
there’s surely no spellin’ in Gaelic.’
A story is told in the north of Scotland of a certain school in which a
boy was reading in presence of an examiner, and on pronouncing the word
bull as it is ordinarily sounded, was abruptly corrected by the
schoolmaster.
‘John, I’ve told you before, that word is called bull ’ (pronouncing it
like skull).
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the examiner, ‘I think you will find that the boy
has pronounced it correctly.’
‘O no, sir, we always call it bull in this parish.’
‘But you must pardon me if I say that the boy’s pronunciation is the
usual one. Have you a pronouncing dictionary? ’
‘Dictionary! O yes. Charlie, rin round to the house and fetch me the big
dictionary. Meantime, John, go on wi’ the reading.’ So John went on with
‘ bull,’ and Charlie brought the dictionary, which the master turned up
in triumph, ‘ There, sir, is the word with the mark above the u, and
there are the words that it’s to be sounded like—put, push, pull
(pronouncing these all like but, brush, dull). And now, John, you will
go on wi’ bull.'
The questions put by the examiners are not always judicious. The man who
asked ‘If Alfred the Great were alive now, what part of our political
system would he be likely to take most interest in?’ need not have been
surprised to receive the answer, ‘Please sir, if Alfred the Great were
alive now, I think he’d be so old he wouldn’t take interest in
anything.’
The difference between the pronunciation of Latin on the two sides of
the Tweed used to give rise to curious confusion, whether we ‘gave up
Cicero to C or K.’ I remember a boy who had previously attended a
grammar school in Yorkshire and had come to the Edinburgh High School,
being called on to read the introductory lines of the first book of
Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He began pronouncing in the English way, ‘Ante
mare et tellus.’ ’What, what do you say?’ interrupted Dr. Boyd, ‘Aunty
Mary,’ forsooth! ‘I suppose we shall have Uncle Robert next.’ |
