THEIR FEAST DAYS,
“In piam memoriam” of their several founders, most of whom being persons of taste, left certain annual sums wherewith to “pay the piper.” Besides minor feast-days, every Society, both at Oxford and Cambridge, hold its yearly commemoration. There is always prayers and a sermon on this day, and the Lesson is taken from Eccl. xliv. “Let us now praise famous men,” &c. Mr. Pointer says, that at Magdalen College, Oxford, it is “a custom on all commemoration days to have the bells rung in a confused manner, and without any order, it being the primitive way of ringing.” The same writer states that there is
A MUSICAL MAY-DAY COMMEMORATION,
Annually celebrated by this Society, which consists of a concert of music on the top of the Tower, in honour of its founder, Henry VII. It was originally a mass, but since the Reformation, it has been “a merry concert of both vocal and instrumental music, consisting of several merry ketches, and lasts almost two hours (beginning as early as four o’clock in the morning,) and is concluded with ringing the bells.” The performers have a breakfast for their pains. They have likewise singing early on Christmas morning. The custom is similar to one observed at Manheim, in Germany, and throughout the palatinate.
Whoever was the author of the following admirable production, he was certainly not νους-less, and it will “hardly be read with dry lips, or mouths that do not water,” says the author of the Gradus ad Cant.
ODE ON A COLLEGE FEAST DAY.
I.
Hark! heard ye not yon footsteps dread,
That shook the hall with thund’ring tread?
With eager haste
The Fellows pass’d,
Each, intent on direful work,
High lifts his mighty blade, and points his deadly fork.
II.
But, hark! the portals sound, and pacing forth,
With steps, alas! too slow,
The College Gypts, of high illustrious worth,
With all the dishes, in long order go.
In the midst a form divine,
Appears the fam’d sir-loin;
And soon, with plums and glory crown’d
Almighty pudding sheds its sweets around.
Heard ye the din of dinner bray?
Knife to fork, and fork to knife,
Unnumber’d heroes, in the glorious strife,
Through fish, flesh, pies, and puddings, cut their destin’d way.