The book Arran; - Cook Clan

THE CHURCH AFTER THE REFORMATION 163
{Feille Bride) was the great occasion of the school year.
Properly it was Feb. 1 (old style), the first day of spring,
but it was frequently confounded with Candlemas, Feb. 2,
as in Arran. On that day scholars brought a small present
of money to the teacher ; the boy and girl who brought the
largest gifts were crowned king and queen with paper crowns,
and the next highest pair figured as prince and princess with
badges on the shoulder. The dominie then brewed some
toddy and served it round, after which the children, led by
the king and queen, marched off for a holiday. Some such
ceremonial, usually associated with cock-fighting, was a
feature of all Highland schools, though many places fixed
on Shrove-Tuesday, the beginning of Lent. It is essentially
an old pagan festival, going back to the pre-Christian Brigid.
Thus a visitor of 1836 found the Arran folk ' in general,
well instructed,' and possessing small libraries of books
which they lent to each other. In ' the cottage of an old
sailor ' he found these volumes—Calvin's Institutes, Henry's
Bible, Sermons by the Commentators, Boston's Fourfold State,
and others, and the main literary interests theological.^
But the books which the ' Megantic ' emigrants, of whom we
shall speak later, took with them show a wider range of
interests, including Josephus' History of the Jews, RoUin's
Ancient History, and Peter Grant's Gaelic Poems, as well as
religious works by Baxter, Bunyan, Dyer, and Boston. So
the Arran schools, though primitive, at least produced reading
people; and what better can one say of any schools?
An integral part of the Session's duty was the disbursement
of charity, and this extends not only to the local
poor, but to the ' passengers ' or tramps who may be on
their way to Kintyre or, more frequently, Ireland ;
any one,
in fact, who can make out a real claim to assistance on any
ground gets satisfaction. Of peculiar interest are two cases
in Kilbride of the same year :
' Lord Teignmoutli's Sketches of the Coasti and hlands of Scotland, vol. it. p. 397.