xxvi INTRODUCTION

interest in the school has been described in a previous volume,¹ and writing in 1887, in Christ’s Folk, he mentions a weekly lesson he was in the habit of giving at Brantwood.² The same visitor who has just been quoted has described the scene:-

“Every Saturday a dozen or so of sturdy mountain lasses, ranging from ten to fourteen, came for a ‘lesson’ and for tea. These lessons were encyclopædic in their scope, ranging from the varying shapes of fir-cones to the correct position on the map of ‘Riblah in the land of Hamath,’ probably followed by a disquisition on ‘the god Bel or Baal’ as represented ‘on the cast of a coin-Italian-Greek-finest time.’ Sometimes he would read Shakespeare to them; but whatever else was included, the Bible and some botany formed part of the lesson. Whether the girls understood very much of what they were taught remains to be seen; but they enjoyed themselves tremendously, and that was what he wanted. After the lesson they had tea in his study, laying it themselves with much laughter and clatter. He cleared the tables for them himself, giving up the room to them entirely for that afternoon, ‘because the parlour-maid’ -not unnaturally-’objected to the crumbs in the dining-room before dinner.’”

“Among the many other subjects, he taught them songs, such as the following, both words and quaint, lilting tune being his own:

‘Ho, ho, the cocks crow!

Little girls-get up;

Little girls to bed must go

When the robins sup.

Heigh, heigh, the nags neigh!

Up, boys, and afield,

Ere the sun through yonder grey

Raise his russet shield.

Brave for work and bright for play

Be you, girls and boys;

And pity those that lose the day

Without its tasks or joys.’

It was my mission while at Brantwood to assist ‘the little wood-woman,’ Jane Anne, who came twice a day to fill the log-basket by the study fire, with her music. She had been taught by the Master himself, on a somewhat complicated plan founded on the earliest Latin psalters, where the rhythm was arrived at, not by means of bars, but only by the value of the notes, and following this method she certainly had learned

¹ Vol. XXX. p. xl.

² Vol. XXXII. p. 286.

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