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Hash and roastbeef, mince and pie
By Michael Burke
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Fervet opus in campis
When we shoot we never miss
When we cheer we cheer like this
Hash! And roast beef, mince and pie
N-O-M-E-R-C-Y
Are we winning, well I guess
Rah, rah, JC yes, yes, yes. Hooray!
Sunday July 4 will be the 117th anniversary of the birth of National Hero Norman Washington Manley. He died on September 2, 1969, aged 76. Rather than revisit all that has been written on Norman Manley before, in this piece I compare his high school days 100 years ago with today. Norman Manley was an athlete and ran for Jamaica College. The school cheer displayed above obviously started being used in football matches, hence "when we shoot we never miss".
The Manning Cup Competition started in 1914, some three years after Norman Manley graduated from JC. Was the cheer used prior to the start of the Manning Cup Competition? It did not occur to me to ask either of my grandfathers when they were alive (both of whom attended JC as well as my late father and my brother). The school cheer was also used for athletics. It was shouted even in my time at JC in the 1960s.
Jamaica College won the Manning Cup football competition for the first six years of the competition. So the boast, "When we shoot we never miss", in the context of shooting the ball into the goal might have been very true then. In those days there were only six schools in the Manning Cup Football Competition. Today, there are several schools competing and these are also the days of specialisation.
And with that come the track and football scholarships to universities, mainly in first-world countries. Some schools accept students on the basis of sports talent rather than academics. More often that not, such students are treated like kings at their high school and can do no wrong. Those schools end up having two sets of rules - one for the sports students and another for the "regular" students.
Track and football scholarships mean that the underprivileged get an opportunity to move up the economic ladder. But in the process, isn't discipline broken down in the school if there are two sets of rules? And then we say that the schools are important tools for changing mindsets to one of discipline, morality, integrity, justice and peace, the lack of which has led to the current state of emergency. And haven't we gone overboard by making sure in a specialist way that "when we shoot we never miss"?
Hash and roast beef, mince and pie comprised the diet of the Jamaica College boarders some 100 years ago. It speaks volumes about the diet of the English brought here during colonialism and used in British colonial schools. In his book, A doctor's life in Britain and Jamaica, Dr Henry Chambers who was born in 1903 wrote that in his days at JC the principal Mr William Cowper (1916-33) found the cheer most vulgar as it displayed the diet.He tolerated it nevertheless.
"Hash", according to most dictionaries is "a dish of chopped meat, potatoes and sometime vegetables, usually browned". It was usually the salted leftovers of what was eaten during the week and reheated on Saturday. In the 1700s it was called "pot luck", as written in the will of JC founder Charles Drax that stipulated even the students' daily menu at the school. With salt as the preservative since there was no refrigeration then, hypertension was a common illness. Today we know that too much salt is not good for anyone.
We also know today that eating too much red meat is unhealthy. Nowadays, many people eat chicken or fish for health reasons, or have become vegetarians. Incidentally, Norman Manley was a vegetarian for most of his adult life. So the only food item described in the school cheer that Norman Manley would perhaps consume in his later years was pie.
At the part of the JC cheer where "no mercy" is spelt out, would some psychologists argue today that "no mercy" should not have been a part of the cheer as it influences cruelty? Maybe, but I think that is going too far. Some of the theories of psychologists are only theories!
The February 1967 general election campaign would be the last one for Norman Manley before he subsequently retired and died two years later in 1969. The elder Manley complained in 1967 that while on a campaign tour in West Kingston the pick-up in which he was travelling was shot at and still insisted that it happened, despite denials by his rivals. Norman Manley's words would be written in books when he said "a new and terrible thing has been unleashed on Jamaica".
That "new and terrible thing" culminated in the current state of emergency some 43 years later. Fortunately, those who fired the shots did not operate on the principle that "when we shoot we never miss" in the context of shooting bullets and not footballs into goals. No one was either killed or wounded on that day in 1967, but it was serious enough for the elder Manley to make the comment that he made.
By Michael Burke
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Fervet opus in campis
When we shoot we never miss
When we cheer we cheer like this
Hash! And roast beef, mince and pie
N-O-M-E-R-C-Y
Are we winning, well I guess
Rah, rah, JC yes, yes, yes. Hooray!
Sunday July 4 will be the 117th anniversary of the birth of National Hero Norman Washington Manley. He died on September 2, 1969, aged 76. Rather than revisit all that has been written on Norman Manley before, in this piece I compare his high school days 100 years ago with today. Norman Manley was an athlete and ran for Jamaica College. The school cheer displayed above obviously started being used in football matches, hence "when we shoot we never miss".
The Manning Cup Competition started in 1914, some three years after Norman Manley graduated from JC. Was the cheer used prior to the start of the Manning Cup Competition? It did not occur to me to ask either of my grandfathers when they were alive (both of whom attended JC as well as my late father and my brother). The school cheer was also used for athletics. It was shouted even in my time at JC in the 1960s.
Jamaica College won the Manning Cup football competition for the first six years of the competition. So the boast, "When we shoot we never miss", in the context of shooting the ball into the goal might have been very true then. In those days there were only six schools in the Manning Cup Football Competition. Today, there are several schools competing and these are also the days of specialisation.
And with that come the track and football scholarships to universities, mainly in first-world countries. Some schools accept students on the basis of sports talent rather than academics. More often that not, such students are treated like kings at their high school and can do no wrong. Those schools end up having two sets of rules - one for the sports students and another for the "regular" students.
Track and football scholarships mean that the underprivileged get an opportunity to move up the economic ladder. But in the process, isn't discipline broken down in the school if there are two sets of rules? And then we say that the schools are important tools for changing mindsets to one of discipline, morality, integrity, justice and peace, the lack of which has led to the current state of emergency. And haven't we gone overboard by making sure in a specialist way that "when we shoot we never miss"?
Hash and roast beef, mince and pie comprised the diet of the Jamaica College boarders some 100 years ago. It speaks volumes about the diet of the English brought here during colonialism and used in British colonial schools. In his book, A doctor's life in Britain and Jamaica, Dr Henry Chambers who was born in 1903 wrote that in his days at JC the principal Mr William Cowper (1916-33) found the cheer most vulgar as it displayed the diet.He tolerated it nevertheless.
"Hash", according to most dictionaries is "a dish of chopped meat, potatoes and sometime vegetables, usually browned". It was usually the salted leftovers of what was eaten during the week and reheated on Saturday. In the 1700s it was called "pot luck", as written in the will of JC founder Charles Drax that stipulated even the students' daily menu at the school. With salt as the preservative since there was no refrigeration then, hypertension was a common illness. Today we know that too much salt is not good for anyone.
We also know today that eating too much red meat is unhealthy. Nowadays, many people eat chicken or fish for health reasons, or have become vegetarians. Incidentally, Norman Manley was a vegetarian for most of his adult life. So the only food item described in the school cheer that Norman Manley would perhaps consume in his later years was pie.
At the part of the JC cheer where "no mercy" is spelt out, would some psychologists argue today that "no mercy" should not have been a part of the cheer as it influences cruelty? Maybe, but I think that is going too far. Some of the theories of psychologists are only theories!
The February 1967 general election campaign would be the last one for Norman Manley before he subsequently retired and died two years later in 1969. The elder Manley complained in 1967 that while on a campaign tour in West Kingston the pick-up in which he was travelling was shot at and still insisted that it happened, despite denials by his rivals. Norman Manley's words would be written in books when he said "a new and terrible thing has been unleashed on Jamaica".
That "new and terrible thing" culminated in the current state of emergency some 43 years later. Fortunately, those who fired the shots did not operate on the principle that "when we shoot we never miss" in the context of shooting bullets and not footballs into goals. No one was either killed or wounded on that day in 1967, but it was serious enough for the elder Manley to make the comment that he made.
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