This popular application of the terms 'chapel' and 'church' found—and still finds—expression in many ways. Thus a man who neglects religion: 'he never goes to Church, Mass, or Meeting' (this last word meaning Non-conformist Service). A man says, 'I didn't see Jack Delany at Mass to-day': 'Oh, didn't you hear about him—sure he's going to church now' (i.e. he has turned Protestant). 'And do they never talk of those [young people] who go to church' [i.e. Protestants]. (Knocknagow.)
The term 'chapel' has so ingrained itself in my mind that to this hour the word instinctively springs to my lips when I am about to mention a Catholic place of worship; and I always feel some sort of hesitation or reluctance in substituting the word 'church.' I positively could not bring myself to say, 'Come, it is time now to set out for church': it must be either 'Mass' or 'the chapel.'
I see no reason against our retaining these two words, with their distinction; for they tell in brief a vivid chapter in our history.
Hedge-Schools. Evil memories of the bad old penal days come down to us clustering round this word. At the end of the seventeenth century, among many other penal enactments,[1] a law was passed that Catholics were not to be educated. Catholic schoolmasters were forbidden to teach, either in schools or in private houses; and Catholic parents were forbidden to send their children to any foreign country to be educated—all under heavy penalties; from which it will be seen that care was taken to
- ↑ For the Penal Laws, see my 'Child's Hist. of Ireland,' chaps. lv, lvi.
