The Phil’s reinvigoration of a colourful tradition

This article was published in Trinity News on 14 October, 2008, without a headline, the second 'Old Trinity' column.

The Phil’s reinvigoration of a colourful tradition

THE PAST has a lot to offer the present, and Trinity’s past is a storeroom filled with valuable traditions. A lesson is always learned from any excursion into history, as history’s vast accumulation of knowledge and wisdom far outweighs the whims and fashions of the present. Chesterton wrote that tradition is the democracy of the dead, and here at Trinity we should always try to give our predecessors their vote.

This lofty vision of the glories of the past applies to the great things of the academy: law, medicine, science, theology and the other great disciplines of learning. But it also applies to the simple, and the simple is often more interesting than the grandiose. And so I direct my attention to one of the simplest things of all: one man’s necktie.

The president of the University Philosophical Society has a new tie. It is black, and stripes in red, pale blue and royal blue are repeated at intervals. The Phil has rescued a simple piece of its own tradition from near effacement, and its president and members now proudly wear the Phil tie when receiving distinguished guests to the Graduates’ Memorial Building.

The design of Phil’s tie may have been lost forever if a sharp graduate – William John White, LLB 1942 – had not committed to paper the provenance of this piece of silk in the alumni yearly of the time, Trinity: An Annual Record, back in 1953.

(The Phil celebrated its centenary that year, although it has since revised its origin backward, from 1853 to 1684. A big jump, and one which the editor of this year’s Calendar clearly doesn’t agree with: 1684 has vanished from beside the University Philosophical Society’s entry in this year’s DU Calendar!)

The Trinity periodical preserved a description of the Phil’s tie for posterity. The Phil, it said, “has made up, to some extent, for the absence of a ‘student’ tie in College by bringing out its own tie – a handsome piece of poplin (designed by Atkinson’s) in black with narrow red, pale blue and royal blue stripes.”

Quod erat demonstrandum, a tradition revived, one might think. But not quite: some old Phil members have produced from their wardrobes a black tie, with the stripes as described in 1953, but with the addition of a repeating pattern of the University of Dublin arms: a quartered shield with a crowned harp, an open book and a blazing castle.

This is an oddity: the University of Dublin’s arms were not granted until 1882, after both of the Phil’s alleged founding years. This could be forgiven, as confusions abound when it comes to the use of the arms of the college and the university. But the Phil has always used the college arms – the familiar harp, lion, book and castle – on its medals and stationary, so an explanation is demanded.

This newspaper may hold the reason. In June of 1963, an article on the heraldry of our institution was published in Trinity News, and the author was upset about the confusion between the college and the university. He mused on the college’s ties, writing:

“The sports clubs which describe themselves as Dublin University clubs correctly use the harp surmounted by crown on their ties. The College Historical Society also uses it on its ties, but the University Philosophical Society for some unknown reason does not.”

A progressive modernist in the Phil, drunk with the spirit of the 1960s, must have decided to deface the ten-year-old Phil tie with a logo not its own, all in response to one sentence in this newspaper! He even got it wrong: the Hist and many of the DU clubs use the crowned harp, but not the full shield as found on these later Phil ties.

This left the restorationist of 2008 with a dilemma: was the initiative of 1963 an organic development, carried out in a spirit of continuity with the past? Would Pope Benedict, the great proponent of the hermeneutic of continuity, approve of such a move?

Archaeologism triumphed, and this year the original tie saw the light once again, sans shields. The Phil’s pretty lady members, the remnant of the old DU Elizabethan Society, are taking advantage of the society’s new scarf, which is in wool and made in the colours of the tie.

And so the University Philosophical Society is like the householder of Matthew, “who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old”. Make sure to commend Barry Devlin and his predecessor, Ruth, when you see them, on their brave reinvigoration of tradition.

CONTINUITY is pursued in the Phil, but a venerated part of our university has made a major break with tradition this year. The University of Dublin Calendar was, for most of its existence, the Dublin University Calendar. That change barely scandalised a single pedant in, I think, the 1980s.

But this year, for the first time since its inception in 1833, the Calendar has been printed in a sans serif font. This change from Times to what appears to be Arial or Arial MT ought to be condemned: a pointless and miserable innovation.

MY PRESUMPTUOUSNESS has been highlighted: spraoi may be Irish for “fun”, but it does not “hardly need to be said” (as I wrote in the last Trinity News) that the word for a college party, or spree, derives from the Irish. A Scotsman himself, Dominic Esler, BA 2008, wrote to point out the Scots origin of the word. A consultation of the dictionary shows that “spree” first appeared in Scotland in the early 19th century to mean “a lively outing” or “a drinking bout”. Thank you, Dominic.