Raisin Monday, red gowns and a court summons
We were sad to hear that Elspeth Campbell (neé Macfarlane) MA 1941 had died last year at the age of 102. We were, therefore, extremely touched when her daughter Alison sent us Elspeth’s reminiscences of St Andrews, which she wrote for her primary-aged grandchildren around 25 years ago. Alison and her family have very kindly agreed to let us share these wonderful memories and photographs with our alumni community.
Raisin Monday, red gowns and a court summons: reminiscences of the University of St Andrews
University life
I left school in 1938 and went to the University of St Andrews. That first year was one of excitement, new friends, interesting classes, playing golf and lacrosse and singing in the Chapel choir. We all wore red gowns to lectures and they were thick and warm enough for bedcovers, too.
We rode bicycles everywhere. University Hall, where I lived, was quite a bit out from the main buildings where we had classes. It was “un-academic” to cycle with gowns on, so we hung them on the handlebars and on wet days held our umbrellas up – fairly hazardous in St Andrews’ wind and rain!
One friend, Isla, rode her bicycle up a NO CYCLING lane and was ordered to appear in court. We all knew when the summons was to be delivered and hung out of the Hall windows and cheered as an embarrassed policeman cycled to the front door! Several of us subsequently went to court with Isla and were told there was no room for us but, undeterred, we said they had to fit us in because it was a public court room – so they brought in more chairs. She was fined five shillings and we all searched our pockets to help her collect the money.
I loved lacrosse and played in the University lacrosse team, which organised a paid tour to the London area. I was lucky to be able to stay with my uncle and aunt at their Westminster flat. They took me to the theatre to see Dodie Smith’s Dear Octopus and to the cinema, and they showed me around London.
Raisin Monday
This was an old University tradition where each Bejant or Bejantine (male or female first-year student) had to pay one pound (in weight) of raisins to their senior student and cook them breakfast on Raisin Monday to thank them for welcoming them to St Andrews. In return the senior student gave them a receipt – often beautifully drawn or painted.
The Semis (second-year students) were determined to get into the first years’ rooms to find and remove these packets of raisins, which we hid in many strange places such as under the coal in a coal-scuttle (we had coal fires in our rooms). Some Semis went to extreme lengths to get in – including climbing the rone pipes – but we repelled them with jugs of water, which we threw from the windows.
My friend Lorna and I shared a room in an annexe near Hall where we cooked breakfast for our two senior students. Frying bacon and eggs is very difficult over a coal fire! Afterwards we had to rush to classes, so we shoved the greasy dishes into a little room off our bed-sitter. When the end of term came, we found them inches deep in green mould and had to soak them for hours in the bath to get them clean.
Life during WW2
Our family was on holiday in Iona when war was declared with Germany in September 1939.
Back at St Andrews we went to lectures and played games and life went on as usual – but the grim stories of the war were always in the background. Clydebank was heavily bombed on one of the last nights of term and many of the male students left at that point to join the forces to fight. Some of us did First Aid and Nursing and got a big white cross sewn onto our red student gowns.
Graduation and life after St Andrews
In 1941 I managed to get an MA degree. This was after my third try at Latin as I had cut classes too often to play golf. But I did finally pass, thanks to extra tuition from Willa Muir, then living in St Andrews with her husband, the poet Edwin Muir. My subjects were English, Latin, Philosophy, Natural Science (Geology, Zoology and Botany), Economics and Political Science.
After I graduated, I went to Edinburgh University and did a one-year diploma in Social Work – with practical experience in hospitals and councils – before going down to London to train under the Institute of Hospital Almoners at St Thomas’s.
My first job was in Bootle before I returned to Scotland to join a team of eight almoners (social workers) at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
Postscript
In 1949 my mother married a Church of Scotland minister – Rev Patrick DG Campbell – and thereafter was a hard-working, supportive, team-of-two-for-the-price-of-one minister’s wife in their various parishes: Comrie (Perthshire) from 1949-56, Tillicoultry (Clackmannanshire) from 1956-77 and finally seven years in the Church of Scotland in Geneva, from where they retired in 1984.
My parents lived in Dollar from 1985 till my father’s death in May 2003. My wee mum, sadly, died last year in 2021. She lived a long, full and very happy life, and St Andrews was a very happy time for her.
Alison (Campbell) Kinghorn, Elspeth’s daughter