Extracted from 'Ireland Long Ago' by K. Danaher, Mercier Press 1962 While the area is Co. Limerick, it shows the Hedge School and the interaction between Landlord and people, and not all Landlords were bad and we had Hedge Schools and people such as this in every county in Ireland. It also shows that while you may never find a reference to your ancestors in any parish register or official document, they may be referred to somewhere, in some book and some day you or others may read that book and tell the story. The Hedge School About ten years ago an old schoolmaster down in County Limerick told me this story from his childhood: - "I remember one evening - it would be in 1884, in the month of November - when I ran home from school to my grandmother's house. It was cold and misty and I was hungry, with nothing in my head but the thought of a big plate of pandy and butter and a wedge of the Hallow E' en applecake. Coming in through the yard I heard the excited voices talking Irish inside, and when I came to the kitchen door I saw my grandmother and old Aunty Norry sitting at the fire with an old, old priest whose head was as white as snow. They never noticed me; they were lost in the memories of long ago, and I soon forgot my hunger listening to them. In time I got my supper, but I sat up until late, intent on the conversation. It was then I heard this incident from a vanished world." "A night school used to be held in the house of my grandmother's father, Tom Culhane of Riddlestown. The teachers were a poor scholar, who used to live with them, and the local curate, Father Darby Egan. They studied Latin and Greek as well as Mathematics, English and other subjects; the priest it was who taught the Latin. One night he finished a book of Virgil with them and was telling them the story of the next book they would begin the following night. Then the class broke up and the boys went off home. One of them, a lad named Connors, lived a couple of miles away, and before he got home he was arrested by a patrol of soldiers and dragged off to the jail in Limerick as a suspected Whiteboy. There was little justice in those days, and the best he could hope for was to be pressed into the British Navy, to save his neck from the rope, for the war against Napoleon was on then, and many an accused man was given that choice, so as to fill the ranks. Word came back to Culhane's, and the woman of the house, my great-grandmother - her name was Mary Mulcahy, Torn Culhane's wife - put on her cloak and went straight up to the Landlord's house, where she was a good friend of the housekeeper, and so got speech with the landlord, Mr Blennerhasset. He was an important man, a magistrate and a member of the Grand jury, and sure enough, he took Tom Culhane into Limerick with him next day and procured young Connors' release. The same night the school was in session again when Tom Culhane returned in triumph bringing young Connors with him, and when all the handshaking and congratulations were over the woman of the house demanded that young Connors should tell all his adventures. He swept off his hat and bowed low to her, saying 'Infandum Regina jubes renovare dolorem!' Everyone laughed at that, because it was the first line of the new book of Virgil, what the hero said when the Queen asked him to tell of his adventures. And the old priest who came to visit my grandmother was the same young Connors, returned after many years in the American mission." The old schoolmaster who told this tale is, like all the others concerned, now dead. God rest them all. But the little picture of the past remains bright and clear. The old thatched farmhouse with the bright fire in the kitchen. The priest and the poor scholar vieing with each other in learning. The little circle of attentive young men. The farmer's children listening and picking up a bit of the classics here and there - they had had their lessons in the three R's from the poor scholar earlier in the day. The flow of erudition, Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Philosophy and Mathematics. The farmer and his good wife looking on in admiration and the servant boys and girls amazed at so much wisdom. And there was nothing unusual in all this, for similar gatherings could be found in many farmhouses up and down the country.