Scaffolding

The summer holidays is time for renovations, and Haileybury has sprouted skips and scaffolding.

You may know the old scaffolding joke. The builders thought they had finished and dismantled the scaffolding, but then the house fell down. When the forman was told he was very angry. "How many times have I told you to put the wallpaper up before removing the scaffold?"

Seamus Heaney wrote a poem about scaffolding

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job's done

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seems to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall

Confident that we have built our wall.

The Haileybury Society is all about relationships. I hope that the Society will continue more and more explicitly to recognize that this does not just mean alumni, but includes teachers, parents, non teaching staff and many others who have Haileybury in common.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Today (Sunday 15th) is kept in the Church of England as the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary - what someone accustomed to the richer provision of Marian devotion found in other parts of the universal church once described to me rather disparagingly as "your all purpose General Synod Mary Day." In Medieval times the feast of Our Lady in the Harvest was  celebrated in mid August as a day off reaping and gathering (the reason for the long vacation was, of course to release the children to help in the fields at the point in the year when all hands are needed). A year or so ago the Haileybury chapel was beautified with an image of Our Lady. As Vice Chairman of the Anglican Society of Mary I heartily approve of that!

Image of Madonna & Child, Haileybury Chapel

Some of you may know Hilaire Belloc's poem.

Ballade of Illegal Ornaments

"...the controversy was ended by His Lordship, who wrote to the Incumbent ordering him to remove from the Church all Illegal Ornaments at once, and especially a Female Figure with a Child"

When that the Eternal deigned to look
on us poor folk to make us free
he chose a Maiden, whom He took
from Nazareth in Galilee;
since when the Islands of the Sea,
the Field, the City, and the Wild
proclaim aloud triumphantly

A Female Figure with a Child.

These Mysteries profoundly shook
the Reverend Doctor Leigh, D.D.,
who therefore stuck into a Nook
(or Niche) of his Incumbency
an Image filled with majesty
to represent the Undefiled,
the Universal Mother— She—

A Female Figure with a Child.

His Bishop, having read a book
which proved as plain as plain could be
that all the Mutts had been mistook
who talked about a Trinity
Wrote off at once to Doctor Leigh
in manner very far from mild,
and said: “Remove them instantly!

A Female Figure with a Child!”

Envoi

Prince Jesus, in mine Agony,
permit me, broken and defiled,
through blurred and glazing eyes to see
A Female Figure with a Child.

The Phoenix

There are many who deprecate the demise of the Vivat! It was relatively late on the scene however. This song by FW Bordillion was published in the Haileyburian on March 13th 1872 and reprinted in the Haileybury Song Book. It plays on the idea of the school rising from the ashes of the East India College.

The tune is given as "So hurrah for the pipe so rich and ripe." I wonder if anyone knows that song and its tune?

The Phoenix

A Bird there was in days of old,

(Each one the story knows),

Who birth did claim form a nest in flame,

And a dying mother's throes.

And we are like that bird of yore,

And we like her were born;

We drew life-breath form a parent's death,

Left alone but not forlorn.

So here's to all whose deeds have won

For Haileybury glory!

Ours be the aim to uphold their fame,

And prove the Phoenix story. 

We boast no kingly founder's name,
We boast no royal clan,

Of a sterner mould were those of old

Our glory who began.

We train no dainty sons of wealth

To dance with luxury's daughters:

In the torrid zone our name is known,

Where Ganges rolls his waters.  

So here's to all whose deeds have won…

Then let us for our motto each
Our "Sursum Corda" take,

And upward still with a sturdy will

Our path to honour make.

We will not shrink from danger's call,

We will not turn from toil,

Till a nobler fame shall crown our name,

Where'er is British soil, 

So here's to all whose deeds have won…