Hedge school

[1] After the 16th and 17th century dispossession, emigration, and outlawry of the Irish clan chiefs and the loss of their patronage, the teachers and students of the schools that for centuries had trained composers of Irish bardic poetry adapted, according to Daniel Corkery, by becoming teachers at secret and illegal Catholic schools, which doubled as minor seminaries for the increasingly illegal and underground Catholic Church in Ireland.

In Westminster a parliamentarian complained 'I do not wish to see children [in Ireland] educated like the inhabitants [of Munster], where the young peasants of Kerry run about in rags with a Cicero or Virgil under their arms".

[4] Reading was often taught using chapbooks, sold at village fairs and typically filled with exciting stories of well-known rapparees, many of whom were outlawed members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland who still held to the code of conduct of the traditional chiefs of the Irish clans.

The laws were intended to force Irish Catholics of all classes to convert to the Protestant Church of Ireland if they wanted a decent education.

J. R. R. Adams says the hedge schools testified “to the strong desire of ordinary Irish people to see their children receive some sort of education”.

He searched in his satchel until he found his tattered book, stood up, and proceeded to read me the account of Christ’s passion—in Greek (Local Ireland & Others, 1999).