Hedge Schools of Inishowen - (Inish Times Wednesday 17th August 2005)
By C.K. Byrne

It would appear that the ancient professional schools of Ireland survived until the beginning of the eighteenth century, even though the whole country was under English rule during the first decade of the seventeenth century and the great northern chiefs, the patrons of these schools, had fled to the continent.

Even under the commonwealth education was continued, despite the fact that the schoolmaster was putting his life and liberty at stake, for in the records of the time they are mentioned as the "Popish Schoole Masrs", who teach "the Irish youth, trayning them up in Supirsticion, Idolatry and the Evill Customs of the Nacion." And it is also recommended that, if taken, the school master should be put to death or transported to the Barbadoes. But still the schools continued, though they were at the mercy of the occasion "for during a period of toleration they flourished and during a time of suppression they vanished".

After the accession of William and Mary in the 1690s they went completely underground, for now education at home and abroad was forbidden under the severest penalties of the Penal Laws. It was during this period that education was left entirely to the lay schoolmaster who was bold enough to risk life and limb in order to teach. Schools were set up in the remote mountainous districts, where danger of detection was least likely and where instruction could be given without serious or prolonged interruption.

These illegal schools or as they were better known, Hedge Schools - were to become the only channels of education for the native Irish until the middle of the nineteenth century. These schools were an institution of the people. They were maintained by the people, who wanted their children educated and they were run by men of the people who had a teaching vocation. Patronage was unknown in the hedge schools of Inishowen, although I was told by Mrs. McHale of Muff (b. 6.10.1892) that when William McConnellogue, her great grandfather taught his hedge school at Muff he was paid £10 per year by Captain Hart of Kilderry.

Such instances were most uncommon. The poorest and most humble of these schools gave instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic. Latin, Greek, Mathematics and other subjects were taught in many of the schools e.g. Donnell O'Doherty of Bree (Malin Head) taught navigation in his hedge school (John Deery, Blacksmith, Malin, b, 1883). This work was done almost entirely through the medium of Irish, although it must be said that the use of Irish was rapidly falling into decay during the eighteenth century over most of the country though this was attributable to the greater value of English at the fair or market. There is no evidence that the schools shifted their ground and they never lacked men who were well versed in the language, literature and history of the country. John O'Donovan, writing from Buncrana on Sunday, 23rd August, 1853, says, "Clonmany is the most Irish parish I have yet visited; the men, only, who go to markets and fairs speak a little English, the women and children speak Irish only. I never heard Irish better spoken, nor experience more natural civility and innocence than in that very secluded and wild parish".

The law of the land was not the only opponent of national education at this time for other education establishments began to appear and these English schools were intended for the most part to wean the people from the customs, language and after Henry Vill's time, the religion of their ancestors. The first of these were the Wakefield, states that by 1809 theses schools, were a failure and that they did not appear to have answered the purpose of their institution.

In 1811 the largest and most powerful of the educational societies was founded at Kildare place in Dublin. It was called the "Society for promoting the Education of the poor of Ireland". but was better known as The Kildare Place Society. Its aim was to give assistance to schools in which an undertaking was given that "the scriptures would be read without note or comment" and that all controversial reading material would be excluded. Parliament gave it a grant of £6,980 but O'Brien says that for several years before the Society was superseded by the Board of National Education in 1831 the amount of the grant was between twenty and thirty thousand pounds.

According to the education Inquiry of 1826 there were three of these schools in Inishowen, two in Malin and one in Culdaff. James and Andrew Heuston taught in one of the Malin schools and Anthony Kane in the other. Anthony Kane was paid £22.55 and £2 by the Rector while the Heustons got a joint salary of £24.7.6, ten guineas of which was paid by Lord Donegall, who also gave the school house rent free. By the Report of 1835 however, we see there are four more schools under the auspices of the Society established in Goorey in Malin, Fahan near Buncrana, Crehennan near Moville and Donagh (Carndonagh) where the parochial school is grant aided by the Kildare Place Society. The work of this society was on a wide scale and it is noteworthy that needlework in their schools was widespread and of course this necessitated the appointment of lady teachers, which was unusual. In the Commissioners' Report of 1826 we see that out in Inishowen, only seven have lady teachers - Mary White in Kumaglug (kinaglus), Margaret O'Donnell in Shandrum, Eliza Kerrigan in Drummellin, Elizabeth Gray and Jane Garston in Buncrana, Ann Martin in Muff and Brigid Barr in Iskaheen. It would seem that the educational aims of the Kildare Place Society was on a much higher plane than most of its contemporaries but the Commissioners Report of 1826 states that it "failed in producing universal satisfaction". Sir Thomas Wyse is much more severe in his criticism: The Kildare Place Society which had set out with such professions of liberalism, was demonstrated to have acted in a manner very inconsistent with the avowed objects of its institution, and to have been totally inadequate to the purposes for which it had originally been set up".

Although it is obvious from the Commissioner's Report of 1826 that Catholics attended these schools in Inishowen it is also true to say that they were thought of as proselytising agencies. And O'Callaghan (1816) points out that the Church of Ireland parents objected to these schools because the Bible was read "without note or comment" and that no authority was given for any explanation of its passages. It would seem therefore that the schools of the Kildare Place Society made little impact on education in Inishowen, for although they were supported by Parliament and the landlords and were in possession of substantial means, they made little progress in establishing themselves a s a popular system of education. As a matter of fact the number of schools in connection with the society in Inishowen in 1826 was only three out of a total of ninety and by 1835 the number had only increased to seven out of one hundred. There were fifty which received no assistance of any kind and the Hedge Schools formed the majority of these.

When the laws against education became a little more relaxed school was taught in a sod house, hastily constructed by the people, a barn or any building made or lent, but the name Hedge School remained even when it moved permanently into such accommodation. The school master had to be content with what was offered to him by way of a school house, as it was always given free of charge and the people who wanted education for their children were prepared to pay even more than they could afford, to get in. This desire for education was a constant factor and universally held.

Corcoran quotes Wakefield as saying in 1812
"The people of Ireland are, I may almost say, universally educated. Many of my readers will, no doubt, smile at this expression, but I must beg leave to assert that I do not know of any part of Ireland so wild that its inhabitants are not anxious, nay, eagerly anxious, for the education of their children.

Again Corcoran quotes William Reed in his tour of Ireland in 1810. Reed says
"A desire for education manifests itself, and very generally, among the lower orders of the people. In my wandering through the country, I found several very humble seminaries, called Hedge Schools. Not having any other convenience, the scholars are taught reading, writing etc., in the open air. There are also itinerant teachers, who become inmates of a cabin for several weeks together, and who receive only a temporary lodging and a few potatoes for instructing juvenile inhabitants."

During the latter half of the eighteenth century the number of Hedge Schools increased and this is attributable to the fact that the laws against education were relaxed The Act of 1792 gave permission to teach to Catholic schoolmasters who fulfilled certain conditions and got a licence from the Protestant Bishop of the diocese. I could find no trace of any such licence being applied for in Inishowen for the masters here, believed presumably that their safety lay in their obscurity. Certain it is however, that by 1826 there were at least fifty hedge Schools in Inishowen and these are listed in the report for that year as pay schools.

The photograph below was taken from 'Old Photographs of Donegal' by Sean Beattie

A group of school children on the steps of Culdaff House, May 1888, from Miss Campbell's School, Culdaff. Hedge schools were still common in the district in the early years of the nineteenth century. A student of one of them, Charles Macklin (c. 1697 - 1797), went on to become a famous actor and playwright in London. An Autumn School has been held in his honour in Culdaff every October since 1990. (Bigger/McDonald Collection)

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