Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 7, 1899

164
THE CELTIC MONTHLY.
the course of one of them. The serpents coil and
bite with the fiery grip of the wild man's heart
and the fearless sweep of his hand — they are his
sif/nature, }Vist as the regularly-crossed rug-strap.s
and the " converted " nerveless Iteasts of the
modern adapted work are the signature of a
night-school student of design ; not one whit
more lifeful and vigorous than the hoops and
loops in the tail of what is nowadays called a
signature by the teachers of "good sound
commercial handwiiting."
Energy ' life ! — what a creature can do —
strong and beautiful, or tender, or rigid, make
us glad or sorry, kill or cure ! These are its
natural history ; and the last point is the most
important, whether we are considering honey-
suckle or snakes, or the words of a man's mouth
and the works of his hands. We don't want
mechanical copies of old ornament back again, in
a sham Celtic school organised by Saxons. What
we do want is a new ornament, expressing happy
sensations of our own, arising out of simple and
healthy conditions of life and work to-day. The
old ornament is a foundation and a starting
point, because, like bodily gesture — of which it
is an extension — its curves express accurately
the natuial directions of rhythmic energy in the
race that produced it ; but it must be filled with
our wider sympathy and bent to our more pliable
turn, before it becomes, in any true sense, our
art or our possession ; giving us hope once more
of a living Celtic design, in which little children
play with the biting serpents, and the inter-
twined ribbons spring into bud and blossom as
" a root out of a dry ground."
Mechanical commercialism has driven out
feeling from work and health from the body,
and has set every man's wits against his neigh-
bour's. Heart and hand united again in cheer-
ful, affectionate work will yet change all that ;
and this work will become, in the near future,
the first element in education.
But what is called education to-day? Your
little girl goes to a Board school, and is examined
in " physiology." She is foolishly asked to write
down " what she knows about the functions of
the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the medulla
oblongata." She remembers the badly printed
woodcuts in her cheap text-Vjook ; and she has
" heard tell " of the enlightened and liberal
minister of information on the penny-in-the-slot
principle, Mr. Mundella. vSo she sensibly writes
down her general impressions, thus : " The cere-
brum is white inside and grey outside, and the
cerebellum is the other way ; but the Mundella
oblongata is between the two."* When she comes
home from the examination, hor own little cere-
brum is far too full of muddled bunkum to allow
her to attend to your sore leg. Now, would not
thp knowledge of how to use last season's hay to
the best puipose in feeding the stirk (I suppose,
for the present, that you are unprogressive, and
live in the country), and of how to boil up the
Howers of the hay into a V)rown liquor which will
instantly relieve your pain, be of more practical
value to the household than anatomically decora-
tive notions regarding the colour of the cerebrum
or the cerebellum'! — though I can't deny that
the last is a very •' fancy word !"
Under the present system of brain puzzling,
children learn to talk confused jargon for a week
or two concerning " 'brums and 'belliims," and
then, happily, forget all about "physiology." They
learn to pull a wild red rose "that's newly sprung
in June " out of its little green cup, and "botan-
ically" name the torn fragments a "calyx" and
a "corolla" — ;,'etting as far from any real know-'
ledge of the living creature as it is possible to
go. Such visionless elementary cram may well
be called, after the name of its most conscientious
supporter, the Mundella-oblongata method. Com-
pare with it the ancient Highland Ben Dorain
manner! of Fair Duncan of the Songs. Dun-
can never heard any of these laige bumbling
"scientific" words, but he knew the character
and humours and expression of every bird and
beast and tiny plant upon his own hill ; and he
gives you cou)plete record of it in two or three
words, and often in one.
Suppose we try the first letters of a botanical
A B C — founded, after his manner, upon observa-
tion and tradition only, for the use of children
up to any age.
A, then, is for Anemone (pliir na yaoithej,
llower of the winds. You must look for it on a
fine day ; since before rain the light petals close
firmly into a tiny pointed tent, where the fairies
hide from the storm, pulling the fine spun rosy
curtains in round their heads. Kneel down on
the grass in the morning sunshine, and look
closely at the pretty filmy pink and white star,
hiding among its finely cut leaves in the hazel
wood. Carefully pluck a few blossoms and a
few leaves, saying to yourself as your fathers
said : " I gather thee, fairy fiower, as a remedy
against disease." Take the anemones home, put
some in a bowl of water, and dry the rest in the
sun; then make a brown paper trumpet, fastening
the loose corner with a pin, put flowers and
leaves into the trumpet, stalks first, and tie
them firmly in with a jjiece of twine round the
narrow end, turn the point of the paper at the
wide end neatly over at the opening to keep out
the dust, and fasten on a little white label with
the name of the flower in Gaelic and English,
neatly written ; for you will do the whole
*Ab actual answer to an idiotic question, as given
by a clever country child.
f Duncan is no methodist.