The Public School Word-book / A conribution to to a historical glossary of words phrases and turns of expression obsolete and in current use peculiar to our great public schools together with some that have been or are modish at the universities

by John Stephen Farmer

Crow, subs. (Stonyhurst).—A master. [From the black gown with “wings.”]

Crown (Charterhouse).—The school tuck-shop.

1900. Tod, Charterhouse, 96. At Old Charterhouse the word CROWN, with a sort of coronet above it, was painted in large white letters on a wall near the racket courts. The story is that the Crown Inn once stood just outside this wall.... When the inn was pulled down, Lord Ellenborough, then a boy in the school, painted a crown on a wall near the place where the inn had stood. Years after, on his return from India, being touched to find his boyish work still in existence, he expressed a hope that it might never be allowed to vanish; so it has been painted again from time to time, and Merchant Taylors’ still keep it fresh. This “CROWN” was not near the tuck-shop, which was a grimy cellar under the old school, with the face of a disused clock for a signboard, and the superscription, “NO TICK HERE.” But it was thought fit that the memory of this old word should be kept up somehow and somewhere at the new school, so a large theatrical-looking crown was suspended, like a tavern sign, outside the school tuck-shop in the pavilion. In this way the name and memory of this bit of antiquity are preserved.

Crow Wood (Stonyhurst).—A wood in the Park.

1884. Stonyhurst Mag., June, p. 294. The churn was in the latter days [1834] turned by a wheel worked by water supplied from the CROW WOOD.

Crug, subs. 1. (Christ’s Hospital).—At Hertford, a crust; in the London school, crust and crumb alike.

1820. Lamb, Elia (Christ’s Hospital) [Works (1852), 322]. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf—our CRUG.

2. A Blue (q.v.); especially an “old boy.”

1877. Blanch, Blue-Coat Boys, p. 80. All CRUGS will well remember, &c.

Cruganaler, subs. (Christ’s Hospital).—A biscuit given on St. Matthew’s Day. [Orthography dubious. Blanch inclines to the following derivation: “The biscuit had once something to do with those nights when bread and beer, with cheese, were substituted for bread-and-butter and milk. Thence the term ‘crug and aler.’ The only argument against this is the fact that the liquid was never dignified with the name of ale, but was invariably called ‘the swipes.’ By another derivation = ‘hard as nails.’ It is then spelt CRUGGYNAILER.”] Obsolete.