Starting School


Roger and Jerry would go off to school in the morning, and I would be alone with mammy and the baby, but now that I was four, things were about to change. It was nearly time for me to start school.

Soon after my birthday, mam suggested that Roger would talk to me about what it is like to be in school, and, thus, prepare me for the new adventure. So, I sat under the table with Roger. It was at this table that the family sat for breakfast, dinner (at lunch hour) and tea. But under the table was a magic place that could be a tent, a stage-coach, a boat, a helicopter, or any other vehicle to transport us to a different world.

Now I sat under the table with Rodge; and he started describing school.

In school, you had to sit at a desk with your arms folded, and you had to look straight in front of you. You were not allowed to move around or turn your head from its frontal stare. If you looked to left or right, you would get a slap of the teacher’s ruler on your knuckles. And, sitting thus, you would have to learn all your lessons, or, again, would get a slap of the ruler on the knuckles.

My father (sitting in his corner by the fire) piped up. I was lucky I was not headed for Bally-Macoolaghan School to face Miss Armstrong. She had a heavy blackthorn stick with which to beat the pupils (in my father’s time). His teacher was, indeed, Armstrong by name and by nature.

And, says Roger, teacher would be sitting on top of the class.
How could she sit on top of the class? Had she a big, gargantuan, backside with which she could sit on top of her pupils like a brooding hen sitting on her eggs? Or was it like the pupils being under the table, with the teacher sitting on top of the table?

Don’t be stupid, she just sat on top of the class.

On top of the class! How? How could she sit on top of the class?

Ah, for God’s sake, you are so stupid!

Roger stormed off.

How was I to know that “At the top of the class” meant something different from “On top of the class?” He could have said “In front of the class,” and then I would have understood.

But now, except for the riddle about seating the teacher on top of the class, I knew what to expect in school. I would be confined to a two-person bench where I would have to sit motionless with my arms folded; and learn my lessons – or suffer the lashes of the ruler on my knuckles.

In the heel of the hunt, as you can imagine, it did not turn out to be quite like that. Roger and I had two different personalities and experienced school differently. Roger was active, while I was reflective. Rodge was full of energy and always on the go, whereas I tended to sit quietly and let the rest of the world go by. Rodge was, in teachers’ parlance, a giddy goat. With a class of about fifty pupils, a teacher’s primary task was to keep the giddy goats suppressed, whereas reflective persons like me were quite invisible. Since my type was not inclined to be jumping round the place, we were not unduly perturbed by the restraints imposed by classroom protocols.

However, as a result of Roger’s briefing, it was not without fear and trepidation that I accompanied my mother to the school when the day of enrolment arrived. I was to meet Bandy Linshee, the head teacher, and was warned to be on my best behaviour. And not to say “Bandy Linshee;” say “BAAN – DEE – LINN – SHEE.”

We entered the school, Saint Peter’s National School, Phibsborough, at the northern entrance, and had to walk all the way down the long corridor to Bandy Linshee’s office, which was near the southern entrance. There were classrooms all along the corridor on the right hand side, partitioned from the corridor with timber frames and frosted window and door panels; and the left-hand side had an outside wall with high windows, as far as the small corridor. The ceiling was very high, and, as a result, introduced to my dream-world the image of vast halls, which I verbalised in a poem twelve years later:

“Where great giants gather
For colloquy in vast halls,
And hang their mighty spears
From ropes around the walls …”


Bandy Linshee stood outside her office, which was the shape and size of a telephone kiosk. She was so tall that you had to rotate your head right back to look up at her face.

“Will you be a good boy and learn all your lessons?” she asked.

I mumbled my reply.

Bending her knees and her hips, she brought her severe face right down to my level.

“Well, what did you say?”

I repeated my answer, which was:

“I don’t know how to learn.”

She cackled and dismissed my concern. She said she was sure that I would be fine.

I was invited to spend the rest of the day in school – with one of my brothers. The question was which I would prefer: to go to Roger’s class or Jerry’s class. I chose Jerry’s.

Jerry was in Miss Connaughton’s class, which was on the short corridor, left hand side.

I was put sitting, as a third person in the bench, beside Jerry. After the brief disruption, caused by my entry into the classroom, the class settled down and Miss Connaughton resumed her teaching.

There were a number of posters attached to the walls of the classroom and Miss Connaughton concentrated on one on which was printed:

Liom                    Linn
Leat                     Libh
Leis, Lei               Leo

We were doing this panel today, but first a reminder of yesterday’s lesson, on another poster:

Agam                  Againn
Agat                     Agaibh
Aige, Aici            Acu

“Liom, Leat, etc.,” meant “With me, With you, With him, With her, With us, With you, With them;” and

“Agam, Agat, etc.,” meant “At me, At you, At him, At her, At us, At you, At them.”

And now the wonderful thing about the coat!

“Is liom an cóta,” actually means, “It is my coat;” whereas, “Tá cóta agam,” means “I have a coat.”

In other words, “With me the coat,” means, “It is my coat”; whereas, “The coat is at me” means, “I have a coat.”

Wonderful!

Next, the coat game. The teacher holds up a coat and says “Cé leis é?” (literally “who with him it?” meaning “whose is it?”); and the pupil who owns the coat answers, “Is liom é,” (literally “with me it”).

Miss Connaughton did not discuss the grammar of the thing, but her method was perfect. She presented “Is liom é” as a phrase simply means “It is mine,” and “Ní liom é” as a phrase meaning “it is not mine,” and that is all there is to it, without any parsing.

Time ran out and the school bell rang. The pupils sprang to their feet, with a buzz of excitement.

“Wait,” says Miss Connaughton. “Suí Síos! First we have to do the coat game.”

Reluctantly, the pupils resumed their seats.

Then Miss Connaughton took a coat from the coat rail, inside the classroom door, and asked “Cé leis é?”

The owner, to claim his/ her coat had to answer, “Is liom é.” The coat was dispensed, and that child was released from the classroom. Then the next coat was offered with the same question; and so it continued until the whole collection of coats was dispersed.

Jerry accompanied me home from school, and we had our tea. It was still bright, so there could be an hour of outdoor play before bedtime.
I wanted to sit under the table and play the game, “Cé leis é?” But the brothers were impatient to get outside.

I expounded on how wonderful it was to understand “the coat is with me.”

Roger exploded, “It just means, ‘It is mine’;” but he was wrong. To me it was a different way of understanding ownership!

Forget about it. We went out to play.

Next comes the Summer holidays, when we go down the country, and then comes September, when I formally start school.

When I arrive home, after my first full day at school, I am interrogated by mother.

“Well, how did you get on?”

“Fine.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you miss your mother?”

“No.”

“Were you sad or lonely?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“No.”

“Did you cry at all?”

“No.”

“Did you miss your mammy?”

“No.”

“Did you miss me even a little bit?”

“No.”

The questioning went on. “How is it that you did not miss your mother one little bit?”

Finally, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I blurted out:

“Eileen Kelly minded me.”

I was never to live this down. The brothers jeered: “Francie Killeen loves Eileen Kelly.” Soon the word got out on the street and all the kids sang out, “Francie Killeen loves Eileen Kelly.”

Deny it I did, but to no avail. My heart was filled with a deep shame.

Somehow, at the other end of Phibsborough, Eileen Kelly ran into the same problem. She was foolish enough to mention at home that she had been given the task of minding me on my first day at school, and her siblings and peers jeered her to shame.

Strangely, I do not remember the actual experience of being minded by Eileen Kelly, just my unfortunate reporting of it. I remember very little about that classroom or class. I don’t even remember who my teacher was. I remember the substitute teacher, however, perhaps due to the adventure of the chalk.

Our teacher was absent and we had a substitute teacher, Miss Gannon. Miss Gannon, short of stature, looked about a hundred years old. She said she had no chalk to write on the blackboard, so she said we all had to bring in one penny for chalk.

My mother was not too pleased to be asked for a penny for chalk. Neither Roger nor Jerry had ever faced such a demand. She gave me the penny and I handed it up to Miss Gannon. Then my mother pestered me:

“Where is the stick of chalk you got for the penny?”

I explained to her that Miss Gannon got the chalk for writing on the blackboard in the classroom, not for bringing home.

One day I was out for a walk with mammy, and the baby in a pushchair, and we saw Miss Gannon. I said to mother: “There’s Miss Gannon.”

Miss Gannon was sucking a lollipop.

Mother said: “Look what she has done with your penny. She has bought herself a lollipop.”

This went into the family folklore and now I was jeered about how I was defrauded of a penny to supply my ancient teacher with a lollipop.

That’s all I remember of my first year in school. Perhaps the shame of my apparent liaison with a girl caused the repression of the whole experience.

One classmate posted a description of these school days on Google Maps as a note on St. Peter’s School. He recalls Miss Gannon as being our teacher for that year, so maybe our real teacher was absent most of the time. I remember the school room as big, bare and hard, unlike the cosy womb-like atmosphere of Mrs Finucane’s room, to which I moved the next year.

There are several circuits among the streets of Phibsborough which are popular for walks. One day my peers suggested we would all go on an adventure, taking one such circuit in an anti-clockwise direction. Through some wonderful and carefully-planned strategy, my peers secretly communicated with Eileen’s; and her peers persuaded her to go on a walk at the same time around the same circuit, in a clockwise direction. Half-way round, the two gangs met and both peer groups had a field day jeering at the two reputed lovers, both of whom were shamed to distress.

The result of my first day at school!


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