44 AI^eXANDER WII^ON : POE^-NATURAUST 



founded respectively in 1780 and 1781, but the pa- 

 triotic Semple adds that in his day "there is scarce 

 a boy but what is taught reading, writing, and arith- 

 metic and a part of church music." This, with a 

 little Latin, we may well believe was all that Wil- 

 son got, or even more, for we find him having great 

 trouble mastering the rudiments of arithmetic after 

 he was a man. 



Those old Scotch schools would make an inter- 

 esting study. They opened at six in the morning 

 and closed at six in the afternoon, and the books 

 used were, like "Ruddiman's Rudiments" in Latin, 

 continued in use decade after decade. The masters 

 were miserably paid and eked out their living in any 

 way that they could. For specially good services it 

 was sometimes the case that the town-council con- 

 ferred the honor upon one of them of presenting 

 him with a hat. An interesting illustration of the 

 manner in which they augmented their small sal- 

 aries is seen in the account that we have of the cus- 

 toms which existed at Dumfries and other places 

 even up to the close of the century, and which were 

 most fruitful sources of income to the teachers — 

 cock-fighting and cock-throwing. "Every boy who 

 could afford it brought a fighting cock to school, 

 and on payment of twelve pennies Scots to the mas- 

 ter, the cocks were pitted against each other in the 

 school-room, in the presence of the gentry of the 

 neighborhood. Then the cocks slain in mortal com- 

 bat became the teacher's property; while those 

 cocks which would not fight, called *fugies,' were 

 fixed to a stake in the yard and killed one after an- 



