A parody of Locksley Hall

This article was published in Trinity News on 1 December, 2009, the sixteenth 'Old Trinity' column.

A parody of Locksley Hall

IN THE last Trinity News this column quoted a few lines of a 19th-century poem which, I feel, ought to be reproduced in full. The Examination Hall is a parody of Locksley Hall, one of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s less well-known works. It was written by Charles Pelham Mulvany, a Scholar who took his BA in 1856, and was published in the college periodical Kottabos.

The meanings of some of the more obscure references were explained by Kenneth Bailey in a letter to TCD: A College Miscellany in 1934. Bailey, Junior Dean at the time, had not seen Mulvany’s original poem; he only had a version written down from memory by Provost Jellett’s daughter. It’s interesting to see what had changed in Mrs Poole’s from-memory version, which is printed in the November 29, 1934, number of TCD.

Bailey says that the repeated “yes” of the 17th stanza is in imitation of Richard Townsend, who was elected to Fellowship in 1845. Dr Luby was a Fellow who died in 1870. “Jude” of the ninth couplet may have been the tavern of that name which could be found on Grafton Street until 1873. The meanings of “Gough” and “Kinsley” (which Mrs Poole had remembered as “Goff” and “Kelly”) eluded Bailey, and will remain a mystery for us.

We can make some of our own observations. The fourth stanza gives a nice description of the hood worn by bachelors of arts. A jib, as we know, is a first-year student. The “so call’d University” is, of course, the Queen’s University of Ireland, established in 1850.

Night roll was the evening roll call which all students living in college were required to attend, at which the Junior Dean presided.

Mickey Roberts is the student’s Tutor; if he is not fictional then he may be Michael Roberts, Ex-Sch, MA, who became a Fellow in 1843.

He is “caution’d”, and this gives some difficulty. A note in Echoes from Kottabos tells us that this is a Trinity College word for “plucked”, which doesn’t help much. We can assume that it indicates failure of some kind, which can be remedied by extra work or by repeating an examination.

Enjoy the poem. I think some of today’s undergraduates will identify with the student of Mulvany’s verses. It certainly reminds me of some of my close calls.

WHILE searching for Bailey’s commentary on The Examination Hall I noticed a few sentences in that term’s TCD bemoaning the encroachment of the word “fresher” at the expense of “jib”. I hope the reader is not tired of reading about the latter word, but I think this short piece marks the beginning of the decline of “jib”, which had surrendered to “fresher” by the 1950s. Here is that paragraph in full:

“On a couple of notices at the Front Gate, lately, the odious word ‘Fresher’ has been prominently displayed. Men in their first year here are officially called ‘Freshmen’ and colloquially ‘Jibs’. What precisely a ‘Freshers’ Squash’ may be we cannot say, but those who are responsible for such functions might very well abstain from describing them by a vocable as unpleasant as it is unfamiliar.”

It’s now far too late to even attempt to eradicate “fresher”, but I will be avoiding it, for the sake of anachronism if nothing else.

The Examination Hall

’TIS the place, and all around it, as of old the porters loll,
Velvet-capp’d and gaiter’d, guarding the Examination Hall.

College Hall, that in the distance overlooks the College Park,
Whence the daring Senior Freshman scales the railings in the dark.

Many a morn from yonder casement, as I can remember well,
Have I look’d on boozy Sutton sloping slowly towards the Bell.

Many a time I saw the graduates, tangled in their sheepskin hoods,
Looking like a drove of donkeys with a pack of woollen goods.

Here beneath the classic cloister did I spend my early days
O’er the Elements of Euclid and the metres of Greek plays.

Here I studied Vulgar Fractions, vainly striving to get off
What would pass my Term in Science and the long results of Gough.

Then I dipt into the future with anticipating eyes,
Seeing visions of Gold Medal and of mathematic prize.

In the Term the seedy grinder wishes he had newer clothes,
In the Term a deeper purple tinges Dr Luby’s nose.

In the Term to Jude and Kinsley heavy debts the students owe,
In the Term the Freshman’s fancy turns towards his Little-go.

Then his form was plump and squatter than was meet for one so small,
And as I perused his face, I did not like his looks at all.

And I said: “My Mickey Roberts, let me pass, and pass me quick.
Trust me, Mickey, if you do so, I’ll consider you a brick.”

On his chubby cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,
As I’ve seen the ruddy liquor mantle in “the Shades” at night.

And he turn’d, his utterance broken with a sudden storm of damns,
Or at least with language borrow’d from the more emphatic Psalms,

Saying, “I your note will alter to a very different song.”
Saying, “Do you think I’ll pass you?” – swearing – “then I think you’re wrong.”

O, my Roberts, stony-hearted! O, my Mickey, mine no more!
O that odious, odious Livy! O that horrid, horrid bore!

What is this my tutor tells me? I am caution’d, and what for?
Just because I couldn’t date that wretched Second Punic War.

"Yes, yes, yes, my poor, dear fellow, it has given me much distwess.
You’ve been pluckt by Mr Woberts – yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

What is this? Mick’s face is smiling: he may let me off at last.
Go to him: it is thy duty. Tutor, get me, get me pass’d.

He will answer to the purpose easy things to understand –
Better I had never enter’d than have come beneath his hand.

Better had I turn’d to commerce, and avoided this disgrace,
Vaulting counters at McBirney’s, or at Manning’s selling lace.

Cursèd be the Murray’s Logic which confounded my poor brain;
Cursèd be the “Locke’s Abridgment” which I stew’d so long in vain;

Cursèd be those books of Homer which, forsooth, they call divine;
Cursed be tangent and co-tangent, radius, secant, and co-sine!

What profession shall I turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barr’d by custom, and but opens to Degrees.

So my heart leaps up within me, beating strong against my ribs,
To be in some sort of college, in among the throng of jibs –

Jibs my brothers, jibs the workers, ever mugging something new,
All the books they stew’d but earnest of the books that they shall stew.

I will drop my term in Dublin, go to one among those three
Colleges that constitute a so-call’d University.

Smaller competition in them, thinner classes, many a prize
Which will glad the student’s spirit, and delight his parents’ eyes.

Never thither comes a Proctor, there no tutor e’er is seen,
There the jibs live out in lodgings, dreading ne’er a Junior Dean;

There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than in these classic halls,
’Mid the Night-rolls and the Chapels, fines and “catecheticals.”

There my genius, cramp’d no longer, shall at last unfetter’d be;
I will take some steady grinder, and will read for my degree.

Fool! again the dream, the fancy, what I’ve said is all a fib,
For I count the Queen’s Professor lower than the Dublin jib.

I to herd with dull provincials, stupid dolts with addled brains,
Dull as ere the yearly cleaning are the College window-panes.

Not in vain my tutor nags me! harder, harder, let me stew.
I’ll go in for the post-mortem, and I’m certain to pull through.

Through the shadow of my “Caution” I shall sweep into my work:
Better portership in Dublin than professorship in Cork.