Hedge School

Hi, I’m Caoime and I am going to tell you about the first day I went to school. It was the 13th of December 1700 when I was nine years old. I’m a catholic so I had to go to a Hedge school. I walked in to the forest clearing where the school was when a familiar sight met my eyes, a damp building made of sods joined on to a ditch stood before me “ this is it” I thought and entered through a hole in the side of the school. It was nothing like I’d expected, for one thing I expected chairs but no chairs just lumps of turf and boulders, another I expected desks, but no, only our laps to work on. The Principal was the only one there his name was Mr O Sullivan. When everyone had arrived we did reading and then writing and after that Latin, that’s when it happened, when they came!! Mr O Sullivan was droning on and on about different ways to say this and that. I was more interested in the faint scream of someone being stabbed. Just then one of the men supposed to be on watch for enemies came in and said “There coming everyone must flee”. Everyone started screaming and running out the door. I ran and tripped I knew I couldn’t catch up so I hid behind a bush and hoped and prayed to all the gods I could think of that the English army wouldn’t catch me. They didn’t catch me thank God but they did catch Mr O Sullivan. I saw them slit his throat!!