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