Sally sticks and humiliation

Not to speak ill of the dead. Much. But since the 'Ould Scal' chronicles were raised in a recent 'Bridge' story, there's been a spate of stories going the rounds about her. One is about the time she died, and the brother of one of her former pupils rang to tell him that she was on her way to her native Kerry for burial.

"Are you sure she's dead?" he was asked.

"Yep. Gone. Headed for the graveyard tomorrow."

There was a momentary pause.

"Right," the former pupil said. "You go out to Spollens tomorrow and order twenty tons of concrete. I'll pay for it. Then have it sent down after her to Kerry and fill her grave with it. No matter what pull she might have with the man above, He'll never be able to rise her on the Last Day."

I have memories of my own of Ould Scal. I was rarely one of her victims. Scal was many things, sadism and vindictiveness among her traits. But she was also a snob, and her worst depredations were reserved for her poorer pupils. My parents were in business, so I was not on her radar for ridicule.

One of her regular things — especially on a wet day — was to say that somebody in the room was 'smelly'. She would line up a number of the 'suspects' at the back of the room and walk behind them, sniffing loudly. And she'd come up triumphantly with a 'culprit', always somebody who'd probably had to walk in a distance in the rain. Never someone who was a child of one of the more well off families in the community. 

Scal liked to humiliate people. She got off on it. She liked to beat them too, with sally tree switches. They were black and of an appropriate length and she kept them 'seasoning' in an outside toilet reserved for the teachers. She used them enthusiastically. If, as sometimes happened, such usage resulted in a broken stick, the unfortunate on whom it was broken was sent out to the toilet to get another so the punishment could be completed.

In Ireland the Ireland where I grew up there were people appointed to positions in charge of children who never should have been. That it was a bad time is no reason why it should be forgotten. The good news is that, from the educational experiences of my own children, I know that all has changed since Ould Scal bit her last Kerry dust. I write this not out of spite against her, but to salute those in charge of our children's education today who are the total antithesis of what schools and the 'Scals' in Ireland used to be.

The cement mentioned at the beginning of this piece might not actually be holding her in her grave. But the kind of school experience that she represented is well and truly dead.