The habitation of the wilder spirits

This article was published in Trinity News on 21 April, 2009, the tenth 'Old Trinity' column.

The habitation of the wilder spirits

WHATEVER Protestantism may have given us, wrote Henry Albert Hinkson, “she has given us little that is artistically beautiful.” In his Student Life in Trinity College, Dublin, published in 1892, he bemoans the “Protestant austerity” of his alma mater’s buildings, with a special mention for the plain facades of Botany Bay, which are, he writes, “more than usually hideous”.

But Botany Bay has redeemed itself. Nearly two centuries of youthful exuberance have given the cold walls a life of their own. This boisterous vita has been gleefully recorded in literature and history, and new generations of irrepressible undergraduates continue to contribute to the life of the quadrangle of fun.

The Bay’s residential buildings were started around 1790 but not finished until 1816, a decrease in student numbers having delayed completion. The square was originally bound by these two buildings, the Dining Hall, and the residential Rotten Row – the last since replaced by the Graduates’ Memorial Building. The College Baths were built to the side of the Dining Hall in 1924, and these were demolished to make way for the East Dining Hall in 1971.

The precise origin of the Bay’s name is lost. Irish political prisoners in the Australian convict settlement had mutinied in 1801, bringing infamy to the Botany Bay of the southern hemisphere. The reputation of noisy undergraduates living in these new college buildings may have led to the comparison with the Australian colony. The college’s kitchen garden was also located here in the middle of the 18th century, where specimens may have been grown by botany lecturers, perhaps contributing to the name.

Let us return to Hinkson, who seems to have written an interesting sentence about every aspect of the university he loved. He wrote that Botany Bay was “popularly held to be the habitation of the wilder spirits”, where students regularly celebrated by lighting fires, particularly at the end of term. “Oft-times,” he wrote, “the stillness of midnight is broken by the cheers which greet the successful lighting of a bonfire”.

One issue of TCD: A College Miscellany in 1900 recorded that “an immense bonfire lighted up with the smoky brilliance of wood and tar and wicker armchair the lurid recesses of the Bay.” This blaze was especially memorable as wood from the Graduates’ Memorial Building construction site was commandeered to fuel the flames of fun. The bill for the stolen timber came to a hefty £11.

Bonfires were still being lit when Kenneth Bailey published, in 1947, his History of Trinity College, Dublin. Bailey, himself JD from 1931 to 1942, wrote that “even the Junior Dean can enjoy the scene”. No longer, sadly.

Botany Bay: A Play in One Act was published and performed in 1892 to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the college. The play tells the story of two cousins living in the Bay, and the preparations for a party in their rooms. With the spree in full swing, Keys, one of the protagonists, even sings a song in honour of the beloved JD.

But a knock on the oak turns out to be the Dean himself, and the assembled revellers blow out the lights. “Light those candles immediately,” shouts the Dean upon entry, “or I shall rusticate every one of you!”

Keys pleads for mercy, explaining that the assembled are simply celebrating the college’s anniversary – not an excuse likely to succeed. But the Junior Dean, like a good sport, gives in: “I will forgive your hilarity this once on account of your desire to commemorate the tercentenary, and keep alive the traditions of Botany Bay.” Bravo, JD!

William Edward Nevill – BA 1947, PhD 1951 – recounted his own college years in his I Lived in Botany Bay: 1943–1947. He recalls the banter between the skips (the students’ servants) and the jollities of the undergraduates. One amusing anecdote recounts the Junior Dean and his porters, “like bloodhounds”, hunting a female who stayed in college too late, breaking the six o’clock rule. They found the immoral adventuress hiding in a tree.

Those who have read JP Donleavy’s The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B will remember the hilarious chapter in which Balthazar and Beefy smuggle two strumpets into Beefy’s rooms in the Bay. Beefy plans to take holy orders – but, like St Augustine, “not before I’ve had my fill of the diabolical.” Authority soon arrives, declaring that “this university is not some kind of brothel”, but not immediately discovering the concealed wenches.

The student weekly TCD lamented, in 1950, the decline of “the college character” following the war. This archetype, “who presumes no greatness of his own yet gives ‘colour’ to this university”, was identified as a student of the Bay in a sentence which retains its ring of truth, even today:

“In after life we shall remember him,” wrote the undergraduate scribe, “the Botany Bay denizen, the Boat Club type – bane of lecturer and Junior Dean, but boon companion of our college days.”

Indeed! If only the secluded quad were filled with such types these days. College rooms are, as often as not, occupied by the most irrelevant of students: the heads of one-event-per-year societies, the most unsociable of the Scholars, and clueless American one-year students.

But there are always those keen, as the fictional JD of the tercentenary farce said, “to keep alive the traditions of Botany Bay”. And to those students I lift a glass.

IN MY DESCRIPTION of students’ academic dress in the eighth number of this year’s Trinity News I neglected to give a description of the caps in use at this university.

Our graduates’ cap is the same as in many other universities, ancient and modern: a square academic cap (known as a “mortarboard”) with a tassel. Undergraduates wear the same, but without the tassel. Scholars and ex-Scholars are entitled to a velvet-covered cap. The Chancellor wears a velvet-covered cap with a gold tassel.

Students, the statutes direct, “shall salute the Provost and Fellows by doffing their caps.”

There is no truth, sadly, to the story that caps are not worn by men in protest against the admission of women to the university. Men should only wear hats outdoors, and this has led to academic caps not being issued to the stronger sex on Commencements day. However, you are perfectly entitled to one – even if you are opposed to women’s attendance at university! But remember to remove it when in the Public Theatre.

DUBLIN University’s student newspaper took another fine haul of awards at the recent student media awards. Congratulations to Martin and all the members of Trinity News whose hard work was recognised.

The first record of an award to this newspaper which I have discovered is from 1962. On December 8 that year Trinity News won a prize for best student newspaper at an event in the Ormond Hotel. The Irish Times of the following day reported that Trinity News beat off competition from Queen’s University’s The Gown to take the title. Godfrey Fitzsimons – BA 1964 – was chairman of the newspaper that term.

Our forgotten student gown

This article was published in Trinity News on February 10, 2009, the eighth of the 'Old Trinity' columns.

Our forgotten student gown

THE DISAPPEARANCE of academic dress has been one of the many casualties of modern arrogance. A cap and gown was the uniform of all students and academic staff members from the foundation of this university until the lamentable 1960s. While the bachelors’ and masters’ gowns have not been completely abandoned thanks to their use at Commencements, the undergraduates’ gown, unique to this college, is now an extremely rare sight.

When a tradition has been erased, we are forced to turn to books. Shaw’s Academical Dress of British and Irish Universities preserves a description of the Trinity College undergraduates’ gown, which students here once donned daily. It is a sleeveless garment with a flap collar, each armhole having a broad flap decorated with three rows of tassels. The side of the gown, beneath the arm holes, is also decorated with tassels.

This gown is prescribed for almost all undergraduates in Trinity. Scholars, upon their election, become entitled to the more ample bachelors’ gown.

In the 18th century it was the privilege of Trinity College students to be admitted to the Irish House of Commons on College Green. “The student’s passport was his gown” says Ireland Ninety Years Ago, in which the author gives a personal account:

“When I first entered College, I was very fond of using this privilege. It was a proud thing for a gib to present himself to a crowd round the door, [and] hear many a cry, ‘Make way for the gentleman of the College!’”

That century, the same gentlemen were advised to have contempt for their gowns by the disrespectful but entertaining pamphlet Advice to the University of Dublin:

“When first arrayed in your academic dress, I suppose you were very proud of yourself, and frequently sported your new gown, even beyond those limits prescribed by the statutes; but one month’s experience, I hope, has convinced you that this is an unfashionable and ridiculous practice.”

And, to help the new student appear to be an old hand, Advice recommends abusing the garment: “You can let it sweep the ground after you like a lady’s train; cut most of the tassels off; and twisting it frequently like a rope, pelt it against every corner you meet. By this means you will probably pass for a sophister and avoid that reproachful term gib, so constantly applied to young freshmen.”

Undergraduates, clearly, were never particularly fond of their gowns. The narrator of the pleasant novel O’Grady of Trinity: A Story of Irish University Life, published in 1896, recorded the sentiment: “The Dublin undergraduate gown could not by any stretch of the imagination, however elastic, be considered a graceful or even dignified garment ... I yearned, therefore, for the comely gown and velvet cap of the Scholar.”

Whether by accident or design, the student’s gown was often a pitiful item. A College Historical Society subcommittee attempted to prevent “academic nudity” in the early 1930s. Bachelors and Scholars, said the committee’s report, “should wear a full, seemly gown,” while Pensioners and Sizars “should wear the customary, lesser gown, commonly called the jib’s gown.”

(Most students are ‘Pensioners’: that is, undergraduates other than Scholars and Sizars. ‘Sizars’ are poorer students – these days Sizars receive free Commons.)

The Hist report continued: “Furthermore, the gown must be a gown. A collection of black rags held together by pins, or a concentration of dark-coloured ribbons assembled by cords, is not a gown.”

A piece in TCD: A College Miscellany in 1949 noted the gown’s often unattractive appearance: “Ostensibly a sable drapery, it is more often green, fusty and ripped, having no kin even in pattern with its neighbour in lecture.” The student scribe was pessimistic: “If the gown is rendered extinct by the fulfilment of its present apathetic decline, it will be a good thing.”

The decline in standards of academic dress did continue, with official approbation. In 1958, ignoring St Paul’s instruction on head coverings in his first letter to Corinth, lady students were given permission to attend College Chapel without wearing mortar boards. Trinity News reported that gowns remained obligatory.

Eventually the undergraduates’ gown fell out of use, despite rules to the contrary. Even today the statutes prescribe a gown for each student and academic staff member, who “shall wear it while performing his academic duties”. The rules of both the Phil and the Hist also require academic dress for meetings; a requirement now never observed.

Other ancient universities retain and enforce academic dress requirements for students dining at hall, attending matriculation or taking finals. It is our loss that we have abandoned such a venerable tradition – even if it was not always loved by every student.

However, those students keen to restore the collegiate spirit can order Trinity undergraduates’ gowns for a reasonable price from Shepherd and Woodward in Oxford. Commons, examinations and GMB debates are particularly appropriate occasions for the eager restorationist to wear his Trinity gown, and do so proudly.

CONGRATULATIONS to the Boat Club men who were awarded Pinks recently for their victory at last year’s Irish senior eights championship: a well-deserved recognition of a once-in-a-generation win.

The college weekly TCD in 1936 reported that students with University Colours would attend college functions “swathed in this antiseptic-seeming material”. I have not encountered a record of the design of this Pinks blazer, despite its former popularity. Does any reader have a description or photograph of it?

Latin graces at Commons

This article was published in Trinity News on 25 November, 2008, without a headline, the fifth 'Old Trinity' column.

Latin graces at Commons

THAT THE LATIN graces continue to be recited before and after Commons every evening in the old Dining Hall is a victory of the perennial over the transitory. These fine prayers, composed by William Bedell, who was provost from 1627 to 1629, are taken for granted, but such a venerable part of our college’s history deserves attention.

Each night an appointed “waiter” ascends the pulpit to read the time-honoured prayers. Ten students are appointed to waiterships every year and, while the job is not restricted to them, these positions are usually filled by scholars.

HA Hinkson, with characteristic sarcasm, says the waiters of his time were “ten scholars of blameless lives and exemplary character”. In his Student Life, published in 1892, he also makes a jab at the eminent fellows: “If a student be seen talking during grace he is liable to be sharply rebuked by one of the junior fellows, whose learning is only equalled by their piety and godliness.”

The curious pulpit from which grace is read is known as the “egg cup”. It is said that it was originally in the old chapel of 1683, which would make it older than all of the buildings in college, and almost as old as the college graces themselves.

Commons begins with a kick on the door, and the waiter says, in Latin, from memory: “The eyes of all hope in thee, O Lord. Thou givest them meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand, and fillest with blessing every living creature. ...”

These sentences are from Psalm 144. While there are some variations among the other colleges which use these lines to begin their graces, our version is exactly as in the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, the Latin edition of the Bible published by Pope Clement VIII.

The Psalm 144 (Psalm 145 in the Hebrew bible) verses are also used, with variations, at Brasenose, Keble, Merton and New College at Oxford, and at Christ’s, Clare, Emmanuel, Jesus, King’s, Sidney Sussex, St Catherine’s, St John’s and Trinity College at Cambridge. Provost Bedell, who had been a fellow of Emmanuel, would have heard these lines many times when at Cambridge.

The waiter continues the “before meat” prayer: “... Have mercy on us, we beseech thee, O Lord, and bless thy gifts, which from thy kindness we are about to receive, through Christ our Lord.” This sentence, almost word for word, is the ante cibum prayer at Trinity College, Oxford. It is probably of the same origin as the familiar “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which of thy bounty we are about to receive, through Christ our Lord.”

That the Dublin grace consists of a combination of the graces of Trinity Oxford and Trinity Cambridge may simply be coincidence, but it may be a nod by Bedell to the two English colleges with which we share our name.

All in hall then proceed to fill their bellies as the three courses are served in quick succession.

Once the meal is finished and libations have been poured out to the earls of Iveagh, the same student mounts the egg cup to read the “after meat” grace, much of which is unique to our college.

Again in Latin, he begins: “To thee be praise, to thee be honour, to thee be glory, O blessed and glorious Trinity.  Blessed be the name of the Lord now and forever. ...”

This beginning is very similar to the start of the prayer used after meals at Clare College, Cambridge, an establishment which was founded over 250 years before our own. The triple praise corresponds to the three persons of the Holy Trinity. “Blessed be the name of the Lord” is a quote from the first chapter of Job.

Continuing: “... We praise thee, most gracious Father, for the most serene ones, Queen Elizabeth the founder of this college, James its most munificent builder, Charles its preserver, and our other benefactors...”

Queen Elizabeth I, as is well known, founded this college in 1592. Her immediate successors to the throne of England and Ireland, James I was responsible for granting generous amounts of land to the college in the 1610s, while Charles I was king during the time of the composition of the graces. All three monarchs issued charters to the new Trinity College.

One must wonder what Catholic students, over the years, thought of having to praise God the Father for Elizabeth – excommunicated and deposed by Pope St Pius V – and her heretical successors. It wasn’t until 1873, when religious tests were abolished, that Catholics could attend Trinity. That year, a Catholic scholar asked to be excused from saying grace, and was supported by the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Dublin, who declared that “no Catholic could with safe conscience take any part, active or passive, in such a prayer”.

McDowell and Webb, in their Academic History, put this declaration down to the Church of the time “riding high on the ultramontane tide”. There seems to have been no problem with the prayer since that time, even when “the ban” was lifted in 1970.

The waiter then finishes: “...asking thee, as we make use of these thy gifts rightly and for thy glory at this time, that we might exalt in thee together with the faithful happily in the future, through Christ our Lord.”

The divine source of all wisdom thus acknowledged, all remain standing for the fellows’ exit, after which the undergraduate rabble stays standing for the scholars’ departure.

The ancient prayers are not always said with the dignity they demand. The unedifying sound of a giddy scholaress racing illiterately through the graces assaults the ears of the assembled diners more often than one would hope. But nothing under the sun is new: an 1898 issue of the student rag TCD called for the university’s professor of oratory to “offer instruction to the misguided young men to whom is relegated the task of saying grace”. “Sensitive ears”, it recorded, were forced to endure “barbarisms produced by faulty phrasing”.

It must be something close to a miracle that these graces have escaped the revolutionary wrath of today’s progressives. One would expect Christian prayers to have been excised from college life by indignant modernists, whose abundant zeal is usually matched by their intolerance.

But, laus Deo, the graces remain prescribed by the statutes. Long may they be preserved from the wretched onslaught of change. Amen.

Before meat

Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine. Tu das iis escam eorum in tempore opportuno. Aperis tu manum tuam, et imples omne animal benedictione tua. Miserere nostri te quaesumus Domine, tuisque donis, quae de tua benignitate sumus percepturi, benedicito per Christum Dominum nostrum.

The eyes of all hope in thee, O Lord. Thou givest them meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand, and fillest with blessing every living creature. Have mercy on us, we beseech thee, O Lord, and bless thy gifts, which from thy kindness we are about to receive, through Christ our Lord.

After meat

Tibi laus, tibi honor, tibi gloria, O beata et gloriosa Trinitas. Sit nomen Domini benedictum et nunc et in perpetuum. Laudamus te, benignissime Pater, pro serenissimis, regina Elizabetha hujus Collegii conditrice, Jacobo ejusdem munificentissimo auctore, Carolo conservatore, caeterisque benefactoribus nostris, rogantes te, ut his tuis donis recte et ad tuam gloriam utentes in hoc saeculo, te una cum fidelibus in futuro feliciter perfruamur, per Christum Dominum nostrum.

To thee be praise, to thee be honour, to thee be glory, O blessed and glorious Trinity.  Blessed be the name of the Lord now and forever. We praise thee, most gracious Father, for the most serene ones, Queen Elizabeth the founder of this college, James its most munificent builder, Charles its preserver, and our other benefactors, asking thee, as we make use of these thy gifts rightly and for thy glory at this time, that we might exalt in thee together with the faithful happily in the future, through Christ our Lord.

The night climbers of Trinity College

This article was published in Trinity News on 28 October, 2008, the third 'Old Trinity' column.

The night climbers of Trinity College

THIS TIME last year The Night Climbers of Cambridge was reprinted, bringing to a large audience the original guide to scaling the walls of Cambridge’s colleges, which was first published in 1937. It is a fascinating and entertaining description of the many forbidden routes which courageous nocturnal climbers have tackled in the University of Cambridge. While the hobby was never so popular in this university, we did have our own “night climbers” in the past.

Here in Dublin, as in Cambridge, the career of the night climber often began with an attempt to scale the walls to gain entry to college after the curfew. Students living in rooms were once required to be back in college by a certain time, and night roll, where the Junior Dean presided, was obligatory for those living in. These days, climbers are likely to be undergraduates intending to get back to a friend’s rooms after a night on the tear, or hoping to save on a taxi fare by sleeping in a society room.

When I was a student, not very long ago, one spot for late-night entry was opposite the train station on Westland Row – there were some excellent footholds in the wall. Cameras were installed on this area, unfortunately, and I know several graduates who earned their Junior Dean colours after being caught hopping over at this spot.

Not as easy, but away from the porters’ cameras, were the railings across from the Garda station on Pearse Street. The bus shelter gets a climber half of the way up, and it just requires a bit of effort to get over the spikes.

Only once did I go in over the railings behind the Luce Hall, with two others. The railings are precipitously high, and I was lucky not to be impaled, but the three of us were determined to get into Trinity Ball that night after being caught without tickets at a party in Botany Bay.

But these small climbs, undertaken in a slightly sozzled state, are insignificant compared to the ascents of The Night Climbers of Cambridge, which depicts fearless students scaling frighteningly high old buildings. The book cover shows a daredevil climbing the facade of our sister college, St John’s – and some amazing shots show figures perched on the pinnacles of King’s College Chapel.

Back in Dublin, our own holy grail is the Campanile. An issue of TCD: A College Miscellany in 1953 claimed that some students, along with a locksmith, had climbed to the top of the Campanile, entered through the small arches, and descended via ladders to the door, where the locksmith made a key.

The article seems hardly credible. It does carry a picture of Parliament Square taken through the grille of the Campanile, but I have taken a similar picture myself: if the door in one of the pillars is left open then entry is straightforward, and one can even engage in some campanology by pulling on the ropes.

The archive of the DU Climbing Club says that the craze of “buildering” – as they called it – became popular here in 1961, and the club even kept a guidebook for the college. Routes on the walls of the Graduates’ Memorial Building, New Square and the 1937 Reading Room are given, along with detailed instructions for climbing to the top of the Campanile.

According to an older issue of Trinity News, the first ascent was in Trinity week of 1962, when a red top hat was left to decorate the cross. It remained there until the following week when steeple jacks were called in and removed the hat at a cost to the college of £12. Offers by several climbers to remove the hat were rejected.

A TCD reporter of the time could not find any information on the climb. He mused in that paper on the possible origin of the red hat. He suggested, sarcastically, that it was a publicity stunt carried out by the socialist DU Fabian Society. Or perhaps, he wrote, the Climbing Club was expressing its exasperation at the poor quality of climbing routes in Ireland. Or maybe an American tourist had thrown his hat away and it had been blown onto the cross of the Campanile?

1965 saw another conquest, when the Climbing Club members – no other suspects this time – left a stuffed crocodile on top of the cross. It was “affixed to the summit with a spike through its belly” said the Climbing Club’s newsletter, which gave a romantic description of the climb. It mentions some close calls: the narrator says his friend helped him up at one stage by grabbing his ears!

The fire brigade were called in that year to remove the crocodile, says an old Trinity News. The same issue says that, since then, “there have been a few ascents, numerous attempts, and several unfortunate misunderstandings with porters as to the desirability of working off excess energy and intoxication in such a fashion.”

The lack of photographs and small contradictions in the accounts make one wonder how much of these stories are fantasy. CCTV, lighting and the diligence of the porters may have made Campanile-climbing extremely difficult, but if anyone does take on the challenge again, please take a camera with you!

IT IS WELL-KNOWN that the four figures on the Campanile represent divinity, science, medicine and law. The heads of Homer, Socrates, Plato and Demosthenes can also be seen on the structure. But what of the four coats of arms? One is that of the college. Another is the arms of either the Archdiocese of Dublin or the Archdiocese of Armagh (a count of the number of crosses formée fitchée on the pallium would distinguish) impaled with another’s arms. These are likely the arms of then Archbishop of Armagh, Lord John George Beresford, whose gift the Campanile was back in 1852. Can anyone confirm this and identify the other two?

I MENTIONED our so-called “sister college” above. People are fond of pointing out our association with St John’s College, Cambridge, and Oriel College, Oxford, with that fiendishly unreliable website as their source. It is true that an association was made with these colleges and KC Bailey records it in his History of Trinity College. In 1933, he says, “a ‘friendly association’ was established by mutual consent with Oriel College, Oxford, and, a few months later, an ‘alliance’ made with St. John’s College, Cambridge.” TCD: A College Miscellany says at the time that our scholars were involved in the arrangement. Honorary fellowships continue to be exchanged between our provost and the heads of Oriel and St John’s, but that seems to be the current extent of the relationship.

Rusticated jibs and disapproving skips

This article was published in Trinity News on September 30, 2008, the first Old Trinity columns.

Rusticated jibs and disapproving skips

DOES YOUR skip disapprove of sprees? Has your wife been pestering you to clean your rooms? Has your new jib friend been rusticated?

Trinity College has many peculiar words, turns of phrase and acronyms which are its own. The words used in the above sentences would be more familiar to a student here in the 1960s, but they remain part of our cultural patrimony.

Much of the language used by our predecessors has been obliterated by time and taste. Older ways of talking about things – reading for a degree, or going up to College – have, sadly, become considered slightly embarrassing and have fallen out of use.

Long forgotten is the “skip”. No, not one of the oversized bins which deface our quadrangles, but a college servant who tended to the needs of the student in rooms. Oxford and Cambridge students still have their “scouts” and “gyps” respectively, and skip is likely a combination of these two words.

“Spree” was once – in the late 19th century at least – a term for an alcohol and banter session in rooms. It hardly needs to be said that it is an Anglicisation of the Irish word for fun, spraoi.

The undergraduate in rooms lived with his “wife”. Not the result of marriage, and certainly not a woman, wife simply referred to what we now call a roommate. The word became a little ridiculous when New Square sets were converted for the use of three people each – no one wanted to be accused of polygamy!

Innocent junior freshman students were once condescendingly called “jibs”. The word is over 200 years old: it appears in the irreverent late-18th-century Advice to the University of Dublin with the spelling “gib”.

Thankfully, we do retain some of our vocabulary. The freshman and sophister years have been safeguarded by official use. We attend commencements rather than graduation. We live in rooms in College, even if we only have one room, and even if the office of the Registrar of Chambers insists on “campus accommodation”.

An angry-looking man dressed in a military-style uniform once spoke to me about the dark old days when, he said, “you called us ‘porters’ and we called you ‘sir’.” With all respect to him, porters they were and porters they remain, despite the current fad for “security guards”.

“Trinity College” is a far more dignified title for our establishment than “TCD”, but the three-letter acronym was in use by the mid-18th century, and probably earlier. “UCD”, on the other hand, was not always the common term for University College, Dublin (which now never uses its rightful comma – long may we retain ours). “National” was the Dublin student’s colloquialism for that NUI college until the 1960s.

Trinity’s other special abbreviations are its unique and sought-after postnominals. The illustrious fellows are entitled to write “FTCD” – Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin – after their names. Scholars traditionally write “Sch” after theirs. The frequent use of that abbreviation seems to have fallen victim to the bland spirit of egalitarianism, and even the names of the members of the Scholars’ Committee are not suffixed by “Sch” in the Calendar.

Trinity Hall in Cambridge is colloquially referred to as “Tit Hall”. Not here, where we currently call our own Trinity Hall “Halls”. This plural version is not an old usage, but one which has been in vogue long enough for it to earn a place in the Trinity lexicon.

Another peculiarity is the “extern” examiner: not “external”, as you might expect. Similarly, your bachelor’s degree will be, all going well, an “honors” degree. For some reason the correct spelling is not used in reference to Dublin University degrees. Both of these oddities are preserved in the Calendar.

Of recent origin but in full health is that affectionate term for lady rowers, “mare”.

The word buttery is one of several words which are also used at other universities. It is not related to butter, as one might assume, but is a word for a liquor store room. It comes from the Latin butta – a cask – via the Anglo-French boterie.

We share the name of Michaelmas term with many other universities – Hilary and Trinity terms we share with Oxford. They are named after the feast days of St Michael the Archangel, St Hilary of Poitiers and the Most Holy Trinity, the last being our titular feast. Let us pray to the Holy Trinity, through saints Michael and Hilary, that these old term names be saved from the scourge of semesterisation.

Also in common with other universities are the terms for expulsion and suspension. As one goes up to a city and down to the country, so one is “rusticated” rather than suspended and “sent down” rather than expelled. Rusticus is Latin for “of the country”. Oscar Wilde enjoyed rustication, but after his time at Trinity, when he was at Magdalen College, Oxford.

There are undoubtedly many more examples of words special to our university. Words must have come and gone over the years which were never recorded, or which I have not encountered.

The eager jib shouldn’t be afraid to use these terms – or bring them back into use, as the case may be. At the very least their use will serve to irritate jealous acquaintances from National.