Gents Mag 1902 part 2 p.418
|
|
|
|
|
introduction, lists | ||
|
|
list, 1st qtr 20th century | ||
|
|
previous page
next page |
||
|
Gentleman's Magazine 1902 part 2 p.418
"Oh, he'll be up at t' skuil-hoos noo; he's lowsing t' bairns" (dismissing the children from their afternoon's lessons). To the school I therefore repaired. "The schoolmaster, I believe?" "Yes, sir, at your service!" For a while we talked of olden, golden days in the dales, when the mines were wealthy, and the sheep-grazing on the fells profitable. The old man - he must have been over sixty - talked intelligently on these and other matters, while I took stock of him, his school, and, through the open doorway, the surrounding country. War maps of various campaigns hung on the walls side by side with the charts requisite to school work; on a blackboard stuck on the mantel-piece was inscribed in fine handwriting the full text of "Rule Britannia." The old man noted my look at this, and said quietly, "Yes, I like to have it there. The children all know the song by heart, but I hope by placing it there before their eyes to familiarise them with the spirit of the grand old war-song." The spirit with which he repeated half sadly to himself the refrain, "Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!" caused me to glance up in surprise. No! it was surely no longer the grey-harired man of sixty, with bent shoulders and threatening rheumatism; he had become alert-looking, and the frayed black coat seemed for the moment to cling like a military tunic to a stalwart young figure. "Yes," he said, "we trust too much to our supremacy at sea, which a single storm might wreck. I know you are aware of my views on this matter. They are laughed at to-day; but to-night, to-morrow, the French may land their troops at Bonton, and Mirdale, like the rest of England, is not ready to resist." I had been told that the ancient prophecy of John Paul Jones the pirate, when his privateering fleet was driven from the adjacent coast, that he would return with the French and put the whole countryside to the sword, had still one believer in Mirdale - and he the schoolmaster, the last of his family. "Would you care to see my guns?" He opened what appeared to be the door of a slate cupboard, and from the recess produced, each carefully wrapped in oiled cloth, firearms of every recent military period, beginning with the obsolete flint-lock and ranging up to the newest Lee-Enfield. Of most patterns he had three or four specimens - "I had three brothers here once" - and these spare weapons he was particularly careful of. then he called me into the recess, where he had made a loophole com- |
|||
|
|
next page | ||
|
|
|||
Lakes Guides menu.