One day James Nash, the old hedge schoolmaster said to his friend Thomas Francis Meagher: ”My school is below there, and I flog the boys every morning all round, to teach them to be Spartans.” The extent of the punishment wich the gentle old Nash would administer is not actually known, but like McElligott, the Limerick schoolmaster, he would evidently take no excuse for neglect of study
From: P.J. Dowling, The Hedge Schools of Ireland, (1935)