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St. Michael And All Angels, Maymyo
Recollections of one of the Old Pupils
The following is a brief description of the school by Maisie Cornelius, very kindly typed up by David, her son.
"On Sunday we went to the Kempsey parish church and met two of the sisters from Dondingalong. When they knew that
we had connections with the sisters at Maymyo they invited us to attend the 100th anniversary of their being in Australia.
It was there that I was invited to write my recollections of St Michael’s and All Angels, Maymyo."
David has also very kindly allowed us to publish a very moving poem by attributed to his mother, pages 6 & 7.
Recollections of St. Michael And All Angels, Maymyo 1/7
In 1901 a grant of land was given by the Government of Burma to Sisters Lois and Francina CSC on which to build a school.
The news reached them on St Michael’s Eve, 28 September, so they decided to call the school ‘St Michael’s and All Angels’.
The Foundation Stone was laid in 1902 and the school was blessed by the Bishop on 2 July 1903. 2 July is a Feast of the Blessed Virgin and we always had a holiday.
I had a long connection with the school and the Sisters there. I arrived at St Michael’s in October 1919 and was there until I finished my schooling in 1928. St Michael’s was a boarding school as well as a school for day scholars. In Burma each year was called a Standard. The school started with a kindergarten of three classes, and then went on from Standard 1 to 10, which was the equivalent of the School Leaving Certificate in Australia. The school also taught music and dancing.
We had external exams in Standards 7 and 10. If you didn’t go on to higher studies you could leave school after Std 7 exams.
School was from 10 a.m.-12 noon, an hour break for lunch and it continued till 4 p.m. In the lower classes, Stds. 1-3, we were taught Arithmetic — Tables which we had to learn by heart, and Reading, Writing, Spelling, Dictation, Hygiene, Needlework and Scripture. In Std 4 we were introduced to Algebra and Geometry, English (which included writing essays, learning poetry, Shakespeare and books by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy etc.), History, Geography and French as the second language. Each year the subjects were more advanced and difficult. At the end of the-year there were examinations and we went on to the next class if we passed.
We also had Physical Education, called ‘Drill’, in the Drill Hall, a large room with a stage at one end and in which we started each school day with Prayers before marching out to our various classrooms. School Plays and the end of year Prize Giving were also held in the Drill Hall and the kindergarten classes used it until a new building was erected some time after I left school.
2 / 7
I started school in the 1st Standard as I had been taught at home by a governess since the age of three. My father was a Scotsman who married a Burmese lady and they had two children. She died when we were very young. When my father married again, a Scotswoman this time, she was not keen on taking on his children so my younger sister and I were put in the school as boarders. My father paid the school fees and we were ‘Parlour Boarders’ and the school was our home for the ten years we were there, as well as ‘home’ to come to on holidays when we went to University and then to work. The Sisters were strict but very kind and we loved all of them.
The school was built in an E shape. The dormitories, named St Hilda, St Margaret, St Faith, St Agnes and St Catherine, were upstairs. The Sisters had rooms attached to the dormitories and the live-in teachers had their rooms above the Chapel. Downstairs were the class rooms, a Reception Room in the front, the Drill Hall, the Chapel, and the Sisters’ Community Room.
We got up at 6 a.m., washed, made our beds and then had breakfast. After breakfast we lined up outside the Chapel, put on our white veils and went in for Morning Prayer. The Angelus was rung at 12 noon, when we stood up in our classes and said a silent prayer, and after singing the Doxology dismissed for lunch. Classes started after lunch with Scripture at which a Sister taught us the Old and New Testaments, Bible History, the Catechism and Creeds.
Twice a day, once before school and again at 7 pm. we had ‘Study’, the time to do our homework. After school the day scholars went home, the boarders had afternoon tea and then got ready for organised games. We played Tennis, Hockey, Net-ball and Badminton. We had the House system in the school and the four houses were called St. George, St. David, St. Andrew and St. Patrick. We competed for a shield which was presented at our Prize Giving at the end of the year. On the 2 July holiday the older boarders were taken on a picnic while the younger ones had races and other games with sweets and chocolates as prizes.
To start off with the school had a cart drawn by bullocks as a means of conveyance to bring day scholars who lived far away to school, and it was this conveyance that took the boarders to Church and for the picnics. It wasn’t very comfortable, but we thought it great fun. Later a bus was bought, and the Sisters had a motor car.
The school was built in an E shape. The dormitories, named St Hilda, St Margaret, St Faith, St Agnes and St Catherine, were upstairs. The Sisters had rooms attached to the dormitories and the live-in teachers had their rooms above the Chapel. Downstairs were the class rooms, a Reception Room in the front, the Drill Hall, the Chapel, and the Sisters’ Community Room.
We got up at 6 a.m., washed, made our beds and then had breakfast. After breakfast we lined up outside the Chapel, put on our white veils and went in for Morning Prayer. The Angelus was rung at 12 noon, when we stood up in our classes and said a silent prayer, and after singing the Doxology dismissed for lunch. Classes started after lunch with Scripture at which a Sister taught us the Old and New Testaments, Bible History, the Catechism and Creeds.
Twice a day, once before school and again at 7 pm. we had ‘Study’, the time to do our homework. After school the day scholars went home, the boarders had afternoon tea and then got ready for organised games. We played Tennis, Hockey, Net-ball and Badminton. We had the House system in the school and the four houses were called St. George, St. David, St. Andrew and St. Patrick. We competed for a shield which was presented at our Prize Giving at the end of the year. On the 2 July holiday the older boarders were taken on a picnic while the younger ones had races and other games with sweets and chocolates as prizes.
To start off with the school had a cart drawn by bullocks as a means of conveyance to bring day scholars who lived far away to school, and it was this conveyance that took the boarders to Church and for the picnics. It wasn’t very comfortable, but we thought it great fun. Later a bus was bought, and the Sisters had a motor car.
3 / 7
We also had a few days off at Michaelmas. The main holidays were after the exams, about the middle of December until the middle of February, which was winter time.
On Easter Day we got up at 5 am. all excitement, lined up outside the Chapel in our white dresses, and veils. The choir started with the hymn ‘Christ is risen, Christ is risen’, while we went into the Chapel two by two and then had a beautiful uplifting Choral Eucharist.
On Sundays we went to the parish church in Maymyo, called ‘All Saints’, about five miles away from the school. Those that were able walked there and back, the others went in the bus. There was a Communion Service in the morning and Evensong at night. After lunch on Sunday we all had to sit and write letters home or to our friends, which were ‘censored’ and then learn the Collect for the day by heart and repeat it to whoever was on duty.
Once a month the girls who had brothers in the Boys’ School were allowed to have them visit for an hour on Sunday before lunch. They met in the play shed.
We had a school magazine, ‘Loyalty’ and those who wished wrote articles or poems. Our school motto was Ich Dien — I serve.
Every Monday Sister Lois, who was the head sister, would write up a motto on the notice board which was a large blackboard outside the Drill Hall. We would have to learn the motto by heart and repeat it after prayers before we started our lessons.
St Michael’s was my home until 1928, when I left to go to the University in Rangoon. I was there a year when my father died and the money ran out. I joined the Rangoon General Hospital and did a four-year training as a nurse and then a one-year Maternity course at the Dufferin Hospital. I always went ‘home’ for holidays.
I knew of my husband who was a boy from Maymyo, but we only became friends at the University. After I had finished my training we got married. We were married in the parish church at Maymyo, where we had both been confirmed on the same day some years before.
On Easter Day we got up at 5 am. all excitement, lined up outside the Chapel in our white dresses, and veils. The choir started with the hymn ‘Christ is risen, Christ is risen’, while we went into the Chapel two by two and then had a beautiful uplifting Choral Eucharist.
On Sundays we went to the parish church in Maymyo, called ‘All Saints’, about five miles away from the school. Those that were able walked there and back, the others went in the bus. There was a Communion Service in the morning and Evensong at night. After lunch on Sunday we all had to sit and write letters home or to our friends, which were ‘censored’ and then learn the Collect for the day by heart and repeat it to whoever was on duty.
Once a month the girls who had brothers in the Boys’ School were allowed to have them visit for an hour on Sunday before lunch. They met in the play shed.
We had a school magazine, ‘Loyalty’ and those who wished wrote articles or poems. Our school motto was Ich Dien — I serve.
Every Monday Sister Lois, who was the head sister, would write up a motto on the notice board which was a large blackboard outside the Drill Hall. We would have to learn the motto by heart and repeat it after prayers before we started our lessons.
St Michael’s was my home until 1928, when I left to go to the University in Rangoon. I was there a year when my father died and the money ran out. I joined the Rangoon General Hospital and did a four-year training as a nurse and then a one-year Maternity course at the Dufferin Hospital. I always went ‘home’ for holidays.
I knew of my husband who was a boy from Maymyo, but we only became friends at the University. After I had finished my training we got married. We were married in the parish church at Maymyo, where we had both been confirmed on the same day some years before.
4 / 7
The morning of the wedding day we had a Nuptial Mass in the school Chapel. I got dressed for the wedding at the school and drove to the Church in the Sisters’ car. The wedding Reception which was an Afternoon Tea was held in the Drill Hall.
The Sisters were always kind and caring. We were sad when we heard that they had to leave the school in 1942 when the Japanese invaded Burma. We were in Calcutta in India at the time, where my husband was doing his Theological Training. What they and the school gave us cannot be measured, It was a deep spiritual and disciplined value. The Sisters I knew have all gone to their rest, but the former pupils who are scattered around the world still keep in touch. The ‘Old Girls' in England and in Perth have a reunion every year and send out a letter giving news of the girls who are living and letting us know of those who have died.
Postscript: In February 1992 my husband — Canon Cecil Cornelius — and I went down to Yessabah, about 16 km from Kempsey, N.S.W., to see the Tropical Fruit Nursery our son Peter and his wife Beverley had bought a few months earlier. On Sunday we went to the Kempsey parish church and met two of the sisters from Dondingalong. When they knew that we had connections with the sisters at Maymyo they invited us to attend the 100th anniversary of their being in Australia. It was there that I was invited to write my recollections of St Michael’s and All Angels, Maymyo.
Maisie Cornelius
5 / 7
Information from David regarding the origins of a poem entitled Via Dolorosa (The Hukong Way)
“In a letter to my father, my uncle, Bert, who as an engineer stayed with the Army in order to help destroy equipment so that it did not fall into Japanese hands and then walked out via the Hukong Valley with the soldiers, sent him a copy of this poem. Bert says he copied this from a newspaper in India in 1942. He writes, “I understand it was written by a Mrs Peria, people from the Burma Telegraph Department. I believe she was the only one of a family of four to come through””.
He also adds:-
“At one place Mum wrote, "From Toungoo, I was with a governess up in Thandaung, a hill station, with two other little girls - Mollie Mears and Lucy Furnivall. I don’t know what happened to Mollie, but Lucy went back to her father who was a Professor at the Rangoon University." Somewhere, I think, on your website [ABL} there was a picture of Mollie and I came across an article by or about Professor Furnivall on J-Stor which I was unable to access.””.
He also adds:-
“At one place Mum wrote, "From Toungoo, I was with a governess up in Thandaung, a hill station, with two other little girls - Mollie Mears and Lucy Furnivall. I don’t know what happened to Mollie, but Lucy went back to her father who was a Professor at the Rangoon University." Somewhere, I think, on your website [ABL} there was a picture of Mollie and I came across an article by or about Professor Furnivall on J-Stor which I was unable to access.””.
6 / 7
VIA DOLOROSA
(The Hukong Way)
(The Hukong Way)
They gathered together in far Myitkyina
In Kin-U and Lahshaw and dreary Naba
These children of Burma, a sore stricken band
For refuge away from the aggressors’ grim hand,
But into the jaws of dark death and doom,
Unknowing they walked, in war’s dread gloom
Waiting and hoping away to fly
In the bowels of a plane to land hard by.
But time was short, and the foe was swift,
And many were left alone to drift
On the river of shame. Some stayed behind,
And others some refuge tried to find
In a treacherous path that looked so fair,
But was only a path to dire despair.
Scattered like sheep and no shepherd near,
They fled along paths in panic and fear
Along that trail remembered with dread,
For many it was their last, lone bed,
A trail that was long and weary and drear,
A trail that was trod with many a tear
By the weak and sick, by the young and the old,
What anguish they suffered can never be told.
The North-West Monsoon had begun
The rain poured in torrents and hid the sun,
With aching bones and trembling knees,
They sought the shelter of God’s own trees.
Cold and benumbed in the misty air,
They lay on their beds ‘neath the heavens there.
Through rivers that brimmed their angry banks
And carried away from their dauntless ranks,
The unfortunate ones, who could not ride
The dark swirling waters, the rising tide.
Through mire and marshes up to their chest
They plodded along, but some stopped to rest
In the clinging arms of those marshes of death.
For weakened by hunger, with last sad breath
They fell or got stuck in the clayey sod,
Their suffering trail no more to be trod.
Bravely they crested, though wracked by ills,
The towering heights of eternal hills,
And viewed from their summit the beauteous scene
Of mountains that flowed like waves of green.
But blinded by hunger, those weary eyes
See nothing of beauty, but tears and sighs.
On hands and knees up the mountain wall,
So steep and straight they would creep and crawl.
7 / 7
VIA DOLOROSA
(The Hukong Way)
(The Hukong Way)
Down again they would slither and slide
The sharp descent of the mountain side.
Torn and bruised by jagged rocks,
Nerves all shattered by fearful shocks.
Through jungle foliage, dense and dark,
Through stream and torrent over sandy banks,
Day after day with aching feet,
They walked that way through the mud and the heat.
Worried by flies and by mosquitoes stung,
Tortured by leeches that to them clung,
Wasted by fever, all haggard and drawn,
Famished by hunger they still carried on.
Dear little, innocent feet that trod
That long, long way that walked straight to God.
Who can fathom the depths of pain
That wrung their hearts again and again,
When silently one by one they fell,
Those whom they loved and cherished so well?
When tender and young their children fair
By the Angel of Death were stricken there?
When mothers whose painful labours were near
Pass that way with sorrow and fear?
No monument, epitaph, verse or rhyme,
May stand to, through the annals of time
The story of these dauntless ones,
Brave fathers and mothers and daughters and sons
Drank to the dregs their chalice of woe,
As once He did in the days long ago,
When on a path of sorrow and pain,
He walked alone our redemption to gain.
But He who knows when the sparrow falls,
Heard and recorded each agonised call.
On a monument raised by His angel throng
In His mansion of peace and love and song.
By M.R.P.?