No examination or ceremony of any kind seems to have been required in order to become a member of the University. Attendance at lectures, after a declaration made to a resident master to the effect that the student purposed to attend them, was enough to entitle him to the privileges of that corporation.
The germ of the modern system of matriculation may perhaps be traced in the statute (1420), which required that all scholars and scholars’ servants, who had attained years of discretion, should swear before the Chancellor that they would observe the statutes for the repression of riots and disorders.
Among the students themselves, however, some form of initiation probably took place, comparable to that of the Bejaunus, or Yellow-bill, in Germany, or of the young soldier, the young Freemason, or the newcomer at an atelier in Paris to-day. Horseplay at the expense of the raw youth, and much chaff and tomfoolery, would be followed in good time by a supper for which the freshman would obligingly pay. Initiation of this kind is a universal taste, and, if kept within bounds, is not a bad custom for testing the temper and grit of the new members of a community. At Oxford, then, freshmen were subject to certain customs at the hands of the senior scholars, or sophisters, on their first coming. So Wood tells us, but he cannot give details. He compares the ceremony, however, to the “salting” which obtained in his own day. Of this salting, as it was practised at Merton, he gives the following account:—
“On Feast days charcoal fires were lit in the Hall of Merton, and between five and six in the afternoon the senior undergraduates would bring in the Freshmen, and make them sit down on a form in the middle of the Hall. Which done, everyone in order was to speak some pretty apothegm or make a jest or bull or speak some eloquent nonsense, to make the company laugh. But if any of the Freshmen came off dull, or not cleverly, some of the forward or pragmatical seniors would tuck them, that is, set the nail of their thumb to their chin just under the lower lip, and by the help of their other fingers under the chin, would give him a mark which would sometimes produce blood.” On Shrove Tuesday a brass pot was set before the fire filled with cawdle by the College Cook at the Freshmen’s expense. Then each of them had to pluck off his gown and band and if possible make himself look like a scoundrel. ‘Which done they were conducted each after the other to the High Table, made to stand upon a form and to deliver a speech.’ Wood gives us the speech he himself made on this occasion, a dreary piece of facetiousness. As a ‘kitten of the Muses and meer frog of Helicon he croaked cataracts of plumbeous cerebrosity.’
“The reward for a good speech was a cup of cawdle and no salted drink, for an indifferent one some cawdle and some salted drink, and for a bad one, besides the tucks, nothing but College beer and salt.
“When these ceremonies were over the senior cook administered an oath over an old shoe to those about to be admitted into the fraternity. The Freshman repeated the oath, kissed the shoe, put on his gown and band and took his place among the seniors.”
When the freshmen of the past year were solemnly made seniors, and probationers were admitted fellows, similar ceremonies took place. At All Souls’, for instance, on 14th January, those who were to be admitted fellows were brought from their chambers in the middle of the night, sometimes in a bucket slung on a pole, and so led about the college and into the hall, whilst some of the junior fellows, disguised perhaps, would sing a song in praise of the mallard, some verses of which I give:
“The griffin, bustard, turkey and capon,
Let other hungry mortals gape on,
And on their bones with stomachs fall hard,
But let All Souls’ men have the mallard.
Hough the blood of King Edward, by the blood of
King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard.
“The Romans once admired a gander
More than they did their best commander,
Because he saved, if some don’t fool us,
The place that’s named from the scull of Tolus.