The only reference found to this school comes from a newspaper interview with Councillor Cubie of Edinburgh in 1897. He was a Falkirk bairn and he relates how he went to school in South Bantaskine. He was fond of his old dominie who was a hunchback. As a young boy the dominie had been with his parents attending a sermon in Kirkcaldy by Edward Irving. The gallery they were in collapsed and his parents were killed and he received the injuries which gave him his physical deformity. Whilst at South Bantaskine the schoolmaster’s health declined and he went off to Bo’ness to start business as a bookseller, taking Cubie with him as a helper.
“I am afraid books were at a discount in that burgh”
was the manner in which Cubie referred to the subsequent failure of the dominie to obtain a livelihood in the trade. In 1862 Cubie moved to Edinburgh.
Falkirk Local History Society 