James Melville's school days, 1569 
(Extract from The Diary of Mr James Melville, 1566-1601, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1829) p.17)

Transcript:

So I was put to the school of Montrose, finding, of God’s guid providence, my auld mother Marjorie Gray who parting from her brother at his marriage, had takin upe hous and school for lasses in Montrose; to her I was welcome againe as her awin sone. 

The maister of the school, a learned, honest, kind man,… Mr Andro Miln,… causit us… to enter and pas throw the first part of Grammer of Sebastian,… and were exercis’d in composition;… the Georgics [poems] of Virgill and dyvers other things. I never got a strak of his hand, howbeit I committed twa lourd [stupid] faultes as it were with fyre and sword:

Having the candle in my hand on a wintar night, before sax hours, in the school sitting in the class… playing with the bent [rushes on the floor], it kendlit so on fyre, that we had all ado to put it out with our feit. 

The other was, being molested by a condisciple [fellow-pupil], who cutted the stringes of my pen and ink-horn with his pen-knyff, I minting [aiming at] with my pen-knyff to his legges to fley him, he feared, and… rasht [came down] on his leg upon my knyff, and strak himselff a deipe wound in the schin of the leg, quhilk was a quarter of a yeir in curing.