for a good child needs learning, leaf 175 b.) and he who hates the child spares the 10L As a spur makes a horse go, so a rod makes a child learn and be mild. So, children, do well, and you'll not get a sound beating. May God keep you good! For pe beft pu fhalt hyt fynde; For, as þe wyfe man fayth and preuyth, 92 Off prouerbis and wyfedomes, ho wol loke, 96 To lerne welle hys lesson, and to be myld." 100 Symon. [As old Symon talks of the rod (p. 400, 11. 90, 62), as Caxton in his Book of Curtesye promises his 'lytyl John' a breechless feast, or as the Oriel MS. reads it, a 'byrchely' one,' & as the Forewords have shown that young people did get floggings in olden time, it may be as well to give here the sketch of a boy, flea-bitten no doubt, with little bobs of hazel twigs, that Richard Hill has preserved for us. Boys of the present generation happily don't know the sensation of unwelcome warmth that a sound flogging produced, and how after it one had to sit on the bottom of one's spine on the edge of the hard form, in the position recommended at College for getting well for ward in rowing. But they may rest assured that if their lot had fallen on a birching school, they'd have heartily joined the school-boy of 1500 in wishing his and their masters at the devil, even though they as truant boys had been 'milking ducks, as their mothers bade them.'] hay! hay! by this day! what avayleth it me thowgh I say nay? ¶I wold ffayn be a clarke; but yet hit is a strange werke;2 the byrchyn twyggis be so sharpe, hit makith me haue a faynt harte. what avaylith it me thowgh I say nay? On monday in the mornyng whañ I shall rise 1 See Caxton's Book of Curtesye, in the Society's Extra Series, 1868. 2 Compare the very curious song on the difficulty of learning singing, in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 291, from Arundel MS. 292, leaf 71, back. See Rhodes, p. 72, 1. 61; and Seager, p. 338, 1. 110. Learning is strange work; the birch twigs are so sharp. I'd sooner go 20 miles than go to school on Mondays. My master asks where I've been. 'Milking ducks,' I tell him, and he gives me pepper for it. I only wish he was a hare, and my book a wild cat, and all his books dogs. Would'nt I blow my horn! Don't I wish he was dead! to go to skole without a-vise I had lever go xxt myle twyse ! what avaylith it me thowgh I say nay? My master lokith as he were madde: My master pepered my ars with well good spede: he wold not leve till it did blede. The Song of the School Boy at Christmas. [Printed also in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 116, 'From MS. Sloane, No. 1584, of the beginning of the sixteenth century, or latter part of the fifteenth, fol. 33ro., written in Lincolnshire or Nottinghamshire, perhaps, to judge by the mention of persons and places, in the neighbourhood of Grantham or Newark.' J. O. Halliwell. ] Ante ffinem termini Baculus portamus, Vt isto die possimus, to brek upe the scole. Non minus hic peccat qui sensum condit in agro, |