At times one attempted to guide the popular taste. In a fishing village, where there was a lighthouse, I persuaded the master to teach Kingsley’s “Three Fishers”: and in an Irish school I urged Moore’s Melodies. But in neither case was the result encouraging, and the attempt was not repeated. Then it occurred to me one day, as it did with a more satisfactory result to Juvenal, “am I always to be only a hearer?” or as to Fletcher of Saltoun’s “very wise man,” if a man were permitted to make all the school songs, he need not care who should make the Code. And I wrote for a friendly infant school a parody of Gilbert’s Minstrel’s Song, in the “Yeomen of the Guard”: it was arranged antiphonally for boys and girls, and the second verse ran thus: Boys: I have a song to sing, oh. Girls: Sing me that song, oh. Boys: It’s the song of the pie, and the greedy boy Who sat in his lonely corner; It’s the song of a boy with a greedy thumb, Which he put in the pie to pull out a plum; The little dog laughed when he saw such sport, For he always laughed when he didn’t ought, He never was at school, and never was taught, A naughty boy, Jack Horner. All: Heigh dey, heigh dey, Heigh diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The little dog laughed when he saw the sport Of the naughty boy, Jack Horner. I think the teachers were a little doubtful about the grammar of “didn’t ought,” and candour compels me to admit that the song was not a success. Two schools sang it “to oblige the Inspector,” but on him, at least, it had the effect of a penitential psalm. I wrote no more. Strange that there should be any difficulty in finding words of songs: “the world was all before them where to choose.” England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales contribute folk-songs of sufficient merit and variety, though, at times, of dialectic English. Germany is always at hand. But I admit that if you deduct in each case songs in praise of Bacchus, Diana, and Venus, there is a large gap. CHAPTER XXV NATURAL HISTORY “His acquaintance with Natural History is surprising. Quite a Buffoon.”--_Old Curiosity Shop._ In Public Elementary Schools the study of Natural History is still in its infancy. But there are signs of its assuming practical importance. In one school in the county in which I write, it has developed energy in a truly surprising manner. Our county paper recently informed us that the boys attending that place of learning had caught and killed an astonishing number of “worbles” in the past year; I think over 63,000. This is a mere plagiarism from the methods of Dotheboys Hall. I turn to the chronicles thereof, and I read: “Please, sir, he’s weeding the garden.” “To be sure,” said Squeers, “so he is. B-O-T bot, T-I-N tin, bottin, N-E-Y ney, bottiney, noun substantive, a knowledge of plants. When he has learnt that bottinney means a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows ’em.”