An important moment in any boy’s life was the first pants, in Cologne’s dialect called “Boz.” Pants and doublet were in one piece, buttoned-up from behind, with shoes tied together with shoelaces or buttoned over the foot. Since handkerchiefs constituted a rare luxury article among boys, the right sleeve of the doublet was usually colored, as it represented the spot of the handkerchief. [ . . . ] The boy’s pants never lacked the ‘St. Hubert’s lace,’ which popular belief regards as a protective measure against mad dogs. Amulets as scapular, named ‘Teufelsgeistcher’ [devil’s ghosts], could be found as well, especially if a nun happened to be in the family or among circle of friends.
[ . . . ] Among the lower classes of citizens, there was no question of school attendance; the middle classes sent their children to school – a horror for children. Most elementary school buildings were dark and musty caves, which saw neither the sun nor the moon. [ . . . ] One can legitimately describe the schools back then as veritable torture chambers, where from dawn till dusk the hazel switch, ruler, Engkge Tau, and the bullwhip reign or fly around in the classroom to admonish the negligent or the chatterers or to ask them to step forward to receive a systematic hiding. [ . . . ] The meager knowledge was literally drummed into the students. Nothing is more natural than children thinking of school with horror and dread, that boys in particular seize any opportunity to pass by school, to skip class. Barely a morning passes when you don’t encounter in the streets leading to the school boys howling at the top of their voices, who are being dispatched forcibly to school by a servant or even by the father or mother, quite probably also wrapped with a sheet, if a misfortune had befallen the little one at night.
The first source of knowledge is the ‘tablet,’ which has glued to it in printed form the upper-case and lower-case ABC, and which the young hopefuls of Cologne wear around their necks by a cord. Once having managed within a year to know the letters and spell ‘Ba, be, bi, bo, bu,’ the child receives the primer. What a pride and joy, as the book was bound in quite colorful or even golden paper. [ . . . ]
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