The Hedge Schools were all over the country, the master was paid something for his teaching and he was not paid well - but he was also paid in kind. So - what did the children learn? This is recorded: What did they learn? Reading, writing and arithmetic were then, as now, regarded as the basis of schooling. Reading and spelling of English was the first task to which the small children were set, and they learned by 'rehearsing', that is by repeating the lesson all together, from the 'Rational, Spelling Book', the 'Hibernian Preceptor' or 'Reading Made Easy', three popular lesson books. William Carleton, at the age of six, learned the whole alphabet and a few simple spellings, like b-a-g bag, on his first day at the hedge school, and Daniel O'Connell did even better, for when he was only four years old he learned the alphabet, once and for all, from a hedge schoolmaster named Mahony, in an hour and a half. Slightly older children were taught writing and figures, first on slates - which, with the pencils, were home made, and later with paper and quill pens. Voster's arithmetic was the usual text book for figures; this was superseded later by Bonnycastle's and Deighan's. The older children, and young men and women up almost to the age of twenty, went on to algebra, geometry, rhetoric, Latin and Greek. Classical learning was highly regarded. 'I have known many poor men, such as broom-sellers, car-drivers and day-labourers who could speak Latin with considerable fluency' wrote a Killarney schoolmaster in 1808 to an English scholar of his acquaintance; in actual fact his letter is in Latin, as more suiting the dignity of a scholar. The master was paid by the parents, at so much per child per quarter, from about 1/6 (1 shilling 6 pence) or 2/- (two shillings) for the small ones learning reading and writing to ten or twelve shillings for the young men learning the Classics. But with small classes and poor clients the master was lucky if he made forty pounds a year - 'passing rich' as Goldsmith says. Of course this was not all his income, for he got many presents from grateful parents, such as potatoes, butter, fowl, pieces of bacon, turf and milk. He also made something on the side, by writing letters, drawing up wills, preparing petitions and other documents or keeping accounts for a fee. There is the case of a master of about 1860 - a National Teacher by now - whose spare-time job as land steward to a big farmer paid him once-and-a-half as much as his salary as a teacher. Sometimes there was a default in payment; the parents were not satisfied with the teacher or were too mean or too poor to pay, and the master could lament, like Mícheál Ó Longáin in West Limerick - "Is ainis mo ghnó a's is róbhocht dealbh mo shlí Ag teagase na n-óg a's ní fónta meastar me dhíol. Ach geallaimse dhóibh, gach lóma fleascaigh sa tír Gura fada go ngeóidh rno shórtsa eatartha arís!" ("Miserable is my business and most-poor my lot, instructing the young and not being honestly paid. But I promise to them, to each rustic boor in the land, that long will it be until my like comes among them again.") Such verses were sung far and wide, to the discomfiture of those who had wronged the master, for, like the poets of old, the hedge schoolmasters used satire as a sharp and dreaded weapon, and one against which there was little defence. There were times when the satire recoiled upon the master, as when a young woman, mocked in verse by Donnchadh Rua Mac Conmara, set fire to the school and forced the master to fly for his life: such extreme measures were rare, however, for usually the master was highly esteemed in the community, and few had the temerity to 'cross' him. It must he admitted, however, that there were masters who failed to keep up the high standards expected, as when the rakish Eoin Rua O'Sullivan was engaged to instruct certain young ladies, and was found, alas!, to have carried his teaching too far, with the result that he had to fly the district and take refuge as a recruit in the British navy. In the second half of the eighteenth century the laws against education were relaxing, and in many districts they were not rigorously applied by kindly magistrates or lenient landlords. With more settled conditions there were many decent Protestants growing more and more disgusted with the indignities heaped upon their Catholic fellow-Irishmen, and in 1782 the 'Volunteer Parliament' passed an Act which gave Catholics some freedom to teach schools and attend them. But this did not end the days of the hedge schools; it meant that they were no longer illegal, but it did not mean that school buildings and other facilities were provided overnight. In some places, especially in the towns, it was not long until school buildings appeared, and clerics, nuns and layfolk taught openly and with general satisfaction. But as we might expect, there were many country places where the only change was that the school could now be held in a farmhouse kitchen or other such place without risk to the owners. Often the older boys had to work during the day, and did their lessons at night, hence the 'night school', a direct off,shoot of the hedge school. Often a farmer gave a barn or a large byre over as a school, and stools, desks and blackboards began to appear. Printers could now produce schoolbooks in numbers, and some of the 'chapbooks' sold cheaply and used as reading books look rather odd to us today, titles such as 'Freeny the Robber', 'Famous Rogues and Rapparees', 'The Devil and Doctor Faustus', 'The History of Witches and Apparitions', and others even more unsuitable.