of Irish
retributive justice, certain cases occurred, in which a signal, and
at times, a fatal vengeance was executed on the person of the brutal
master. Sometimes the brothers and other relatives of the mutilated
child would come in a body to the school, and flog the pedagogue with
his own taws, until his back was lapped in blood. Sometimes they would
beat him until few symptoms of life remained.

Occasionally he would get a nocturnal notice to quit the parish in a
given time, under a penalty which seldom proved a dead letter in case
of non-compliance. Not unfrequently did those whom he had, when boys,
treated with such barbarity, go back to him, when young men, not so much
for education's sake, as for the especial purpose of retaliating upon
him for his former cruelty. When cases of this nature occurred, he found
himself a mere cipher in his school, never daring to practise excessive
severity in their presence. Instances have come to our own knowledge, of
masters, who, for their mere amusement, would go out to the next
hedge, cut a large branch of furze or thorn, and having first carefully
arranged the children on a row round the walls of the school, their
naked legs stretched out before them, would sweep round the branch,
bristling with spikes and prickles, with all his force against their
limbs, until, in a few minutes, a circle of blood was visible on
the ground where they sat, their legs appearing as if they had been
scarified. This the master did, whenever he happened to be drunk, or
in a remarkably good humor. The poor children, however, were obliged
to laugh loud, and enjoy it, though the tears were falling down their
cheeks, in consequence of the pain he inflicted. To knock down a child
with the fist, was considered nothing harsh; nor, if a boy were, cut,
or prostrated by a blow of a cudgel on the head, did he ever think of
representing the master's cruelty to his parents. Kicking on the shins
with a point of a brogue or shoe, bound round the edge of the sole with
iron nails, until the bone was laid open, was a common punishment; and
as for the usual slapping, horsing, and flogging, they were inflicted
with a brutality that in every case richly deserved for the tyrant, not
only a peculiar whipping by the hand of the common executioner, but a
separation from civilized society by transportation for life. It is a
fact, however, that in consequence of the general severity practised in
hedge schools, excesses of p