Free Wheels Within Wheels by Dervla Murphy Page A

inscriptions and speculating about the fate of such as John Carney who, in 1811, at the age of fifteen, ‘loved peace but died violently’. Of the consequences of this addiction there will be more anon. 
    * One of those two was Mark, of whom there will be much more anon.

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    One fine spring morning, when I was six and a half, my father escorted me to the local national school and my formal education began. I remember lying on the chalk-smelling floor boards of a huge, bright classroom, kicking in a tantrum and feeling tears running into my ears and noticing the chalk dust gyrating through a sunbeam. My father was standing over me looking helpless and worried and being assured by a little group of nuns that I would settle down the moment he left me.
    I had not any objection, in theory, to starting school, but the moment I entered that classroom I panicked at the prospect of being confined within alien walls until some unknown nun gave me permission to leave. At home I chose to spend hours alone every day, yet if at any moment I suddenly wanted to be with my mother she was always accessible. Here, however, I was trapped in a situation where it would be impossible to reach her no matter how desperate my need. So I screamed and kicked frantically while the other children, who had all started school at the age of four, regarded me with amused scorn, and the nuns, raising their voices above my howls, repeated firmly that I would soon settle down and tried to edge my father tactfully towards the door.
    Luckily I could not express my desolate sense of betrayal. Had my father realised that this was not just another bout of nastiness he might well have taken me home again, thereby setting a disastrous precedent. As it was I did settle down surprisingly soon after his reluctant departure, having discovered that I liked the nun who was to be my teacher. She explained that if ever I needed my mother very badly I could at once be sent home in the charge of an older girl. Whereupon I discounted the possibility of ever again needing my mother very badly, either in or out of school hours, and by lunchtime being a scholar seemed a good idea.
    Yet I did not mean to profit in the accepted manner by my educational opportunities. Indeed, having learned to read at home I felt that the essential part of my education had already been completed. The world was full of books and I intended to read as many as possible before Idied. What I did not intend was to waste the best years of my life – the only years of my youth – studying inexpressibly boring things like French and arithmetic. I knew by then of my parents’ plans: at ten I would be sent away to school, at eighteen I would be sent to the Sorbonne, at twenty-two or twenty-three I would return home with a degree in something or other and be welcomed as a complete, civilised human being. This programme might have fired many children with worthy ambitions, but I neither wished it to be carried out nor believed that it would be. We are born – I am convinced – with a certain basic foreknowledge about the pattern of our lives and I always regarded those parental plans as pipe-dreams.
    My teachers found me an awkward, lazy pupil and the educational methods of the day did nothing to help. Another discouragement, for a child without any linguistic ability, was the compulsory use of Irish as the language through which all subjects were taught in free primary schools – except, significantly, religious instruction. By the 1930s most Irish families had been English-speaking for generations and only a tiny minority were interested in reviving their own language. So this lunatic law was extremely unpopular. It produced millions of Irish citizens who were, as one wit sourly observed, ‘illiterate in two languages’. The situation would be paralleled in Britain if Wales reconquered England and compelled all state-school pupils to study in Welsh.
    Even as a character-forming influence, Lismore school