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Daniel O’Connell
The name given to rural schools in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland, often held in barns and run by local educated men. The schools typically taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and often included lessons in Greek and Latin. Students of different levels were all taught by the same master, who required a fee. Following the implementation of British national school system throughout Ireland in the 1830s, the number of hedge schools declined drastically.
Hedge school Quotes in Translations
The Translations quotes below are all either spoken by Hedge school or refer to Hedge school. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 1
Quotes
Bridget: Did you know that you start at the age of six and you have to stick at it until you're twelve at least — no matter how smart you are or how much you know.
Doalty: Who told you that yarn?
Bridget: And every child from every house has to go all day, every day, summer or winter. That's the law.
Doalty: I'll tell you something — nobody's going to go near them — they're not going to take on — law or no law.
Bridget: And everything's free in them. You pay for nothing except the books you use […] And from the very first day you go, you'll not hear one word of Irish spoken. You'll be taught to speak English and every subject will be taught through English and everyone'll end up as cute as the Buncrana people.
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Maire: You talk to me about getting married — with neither a roof over your head nor a sod of ground under your foot. I suggest you go for the new school; but no - 'My father’s in for that.' Well now he's got it and now this is finished and now you've nothing.
Manus: I can always ...
Maire: What? Teach classics to the cows? Agh —
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Hedge school Term Timeline in Translations
The timeline below shows where the term Hedge school appears in Translations. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1
...Irish-Speaking townland of Baile Bag/Balleybeg in County Donegal, Ireland. Manus and Sarah are in a hedge school situated in a dusty old barn, full of disused farm instruments alongside the students’ stools...
(full context)
...a job at the national school that is soon opening, because it will put the hedge school out of business. He says he cannot apply because his father already has. Sarah is...
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...him to take it over when it opens and run it as he runs the hedge school .
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Act 2, Scene 1
...Manus refers to as “the colonist.” Manus has been offered a job to start another hedge school on Inis Meadhon, an island fifty miles south. Owen congratulations Manus and insists he and...
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