Wee Hughie

He's gone to school, Wee Hughie,/An' him not four./Sure I saw the fright was in him/When he left the door./But he took a hand o 'Denny/An' a hand o' Dan,/Wi' Joe's owld coat upon him -/Och, the poor wee man!/He cut the quarest figure,/More stout nor thin;/An' trottin' right an' steady/Wi his toes turned in./I watched him to the corner/0' the big turf stack,/An' the more his feet went forrit,/Still his head turned back./He was lookin',/would I call him -/Och me heart was woe-/Sure it's lost I am without him,/But he be to go./I followed to the turnin'/When they passed it by,/God help him, he was cryin',/An', maybe, so was I.

That sentimental old poem by Elizabeth Shane summed up the feelings of many parents and pupils as school began for the first time or resumed after the summer break. Forty-six years ago I made that first journey to school on the day of my fourth birthday. Primary School was a small, two-teacher school in the heart of the countryside, in a place called Anamar. It has since become well-known as the birth-place of the late Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich. There were only thirty or so pupils enrolled at any given time during those early years. The youngest of us were driven there in the morning while some of the older pupils cycled. Many of us walked home in the evening. The journey home could be just as instructive as the school lessons. We learned a lot about the natural world as we explored the hedgerows and streams and we learned something of human nature too as we interacted on our homeward journey. Life got progressively more challenging as we moved up the ranks from P1 to P7. The last few years, for the chosen few, were spent cramming for the ‘11 plus’ exam.

Having passed the ‘11 plus’, I arrived at boarding school in Saint Colman’s College, Newry armed with a sheaf of government grants, my passport to ‘Grammar School’. I got off to a bad start by taking a detour to Daisy Hill Hospital on the night of my first full day there, suffering from appendicitis. I owe my life to a priest who had been expelled from Nigeria, where the Biafran war was then raging, and who was now teaching in a temporary capacity in the college. He was the only one who believed that my pain was anything more than travel sickness or homesickness. It was 1969 and the North was in turmoil. I arrived in hospital having made a detour through Bessbrook to avoid the burning buildings in Newry City centre that night.

I still remember my feelings of despondency as I made my way back to school over the next five or six years. Being a boarder, I travelled home every six weeks or so. Returning to school after a weekend break could be traumatic. I can still visualise the lights of Newry in the hollow as we drove down the Camlough Road on a Sunday night in my father’s Austin Cambridge car. I can still smell the lockers that used to hoard our apples and cheese and the ‘Marvel’ dried milk for our illegally secreted cereals. We also brought eggs, jam, and sugar to sweeten our daily diet.

Soon we settled back into routine and began counting down the days of another term. People ask me sometimes whether I think it was a good or a bad experience for a young student. We entered at eleven years of age. It was certainly deficient in terms of what might now be termed the inner life of a child. Little emotional or pastoral care was evident. What was available was well disguised. The emotional landscape was more desert than oasis. The benefits it did offer were discipline in life and in study and an ability to care for and organise yourself. It was a television-free routine, with none of the distractions of home or of the outside world. We spoke of the college as the ‘house’ but there was little sign of the comforts of home. I left the ‘house’ during the first term of my ‘A’ Levels, abandoning my studies of English, Irish and Spanish. I believed that I had turned my back on school for the last time.

Six years later I went back to education. I entered Maynooth only to discover that ‘Colman’s’ had been merely a pale imitation of the master pattern in Kildare. I was twenty two years of age and I was going back to school. The language of the ‘house’ remained but the terms of our course of education had changed. We read philosophy. Instead of compositions we submitted assignments. We had professors instead of teachers. We prepared theses instead of essays and we had seminars in place of study groups. There was still solemn silence at night time, in theory at least, but study was no longer communal. In secondary school we had two study periods each evening, ‘first steed’ and ‘second steed,’ together lasting over three hours. Now we were expected to study alone. At first I thought this university business might be beyond me but I soon realised that like most ‘mature students’ I was highly motivated and I soon fell into the routine of ‘Third Level’. I left six years later thinking that this was definitely the end of going back to school. Six years later I went back to school yet again. This time I studied full time during the summer months and part-time during the rest of the year for a period of three years. I experienced the trauma of unfinished assignments and ‘comprehensive’ exams all over again. I also knew the joy of learning as an adult.

Back to school is no longer the prerogative of the young and staying at school for much longer than in the past has become the norm. Primary school children generally love their schools and teachers. The fear and the emotional distance of the old ways are largely gone, unmissed and unmourned. There is a spring in Wee Hughie’s step nowadays as he sets out to school.