Nevertheless Catholic parents managed to get their children educated, and the nation which its lawgivers doomed to ignorance and degradation produced, by some miracle, scholars like Charles O’Connor of Belanagare and high-bred, charming women like her whose life-story we are now studying. How was it accomplished? What a stirring and splendid chapter the full answer to that question would add to the history of human endeavour! How one longs for the coming of the long-delayed historian of the Irish people who shall tell, in all its fullness, the story of how they educated their children during the Penal Days. For the boys we know in part how it was done. They were smuggled off to the Continent with other forbidden “cargoes,” and at the great colleges in Spain, and France and the Low Countries found “bourses” provided by the pious generosity of their wealthier countrymen, or were supported by remittances from home which no threatened penalty could prevent their devoted parents from sending.[33] Or a tutor was provided for them in some hunted bishop, perhaps, or friar, who found safety in the lowly disguise of a gardener or farm-servant working on their father’s place,[34] or who came there for a time, as one of the Bishops of Clogher is recorded to have made the rounds of his diocese, in the character of a wandering harper. Or they would get a course of lessons from some of the numerous scribes, who perambulated the country, stopping for a season at the houses of the gentry of the old race, and copying out manuscripts for them—Keating’s History of Ireland,[35] tales of the Red Branch and the Fenians, pseudo-historical accounts of the old families—as Sean MaGauran did for Brian Maguire.[36] Footnote 33: The statute dealing with their case runs thus: “In case any of his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland shall _go_ or send any person to any public or private Popish school, in parts beyond the seas, in order to be educated in the Popish religion, and there be trained in the Popish religion, or shall send money or other thing towards the maintenance of such person gone or sent, and trained as aforesaid, or as a charity for relief of a religious house, every person so going, sending or sent, shall, on conviction, be disabled to sue, in law or in equity, or to be guardian, executor, or administrator, or take a legacy or deed of gift, or bear any office, and shall forfeit goods and chattels for ever, and lands for life.”—7th William III, ch. 4, s.), 1694. Footnote 34: See “Religious Songs of Connacht,” _passim_. Footnote 35: It is instructive to note the dates of the MSS. of Keating in the British Museum. The larger number were written during the Penal Days. Footnote 36: See “Maguires of Fermanagh,” edited by Fr. Dinneen, p. 140.