period, when he became our sole substitute for the printer and when
his diligence preserved for us all that remains of a fading
literature. He was miserably poor. He toiled through the day at the
spade or the plough, or guided the shuttle through the loom. At
night, by the flare of the turf-fire or the fitful light of a
splinter of bogwood, he made his copy of poem or tract or tale, which
but for him would have perished. The copies are often ill-spelt and
ill-written, but with all their faults they are as noble a monument
to national love of learning as any nation can boast of.

In our gallery of types we must not forget the character whom English
writers contemptuously called the "hedge-schoolmaster." The
hedge-school in its most elemental state was an open-air daily
assemblage of youths in pursuit of knowledge. Inasmuch as the law had
refused learning a fitting temple in which to abide and be honored,
she was led by her votaries into the open, and there, beside the
fragrant hedge, if you will, with the green sward for benches, and
the canopy of heaven for dome, she was honored in Ireland, even as
she had been honored ages before in Greece, in Palestine, and by our
primordial Celtic ancestors themselves. The hedge-schoolmaster
conducted the rites, and the air resounded with the sonorous
hexameters of Virgil and the musical odes of Horace.

In the Irish-speaking portions of the country the hedge-schoolmaster
was often also a poet who wrote mellifluous songs in Irish, which
were sung throughout the entire district and sometimes earned him
enduring fame. Eoghan Ruadh O'Sullivan and Andrew MacGrath, called
_An Mangaire Sugach_ or "the Jolly Pedlar," are well-known instances
of this type.