School Song

1950 wasn’t exactly a quiet year. As Chairman Mao moved his furniture into Beijing’s Forbidden Palace, India was moving out of the British Empire, while crisis in Korea forced the world to the brink of a Third World War. In Bangor Grammar School, however, neither the looming threat of war nor the advance of Communism was sufficient to distract the indefatigable Miss Patton and Dr Emery, as their collaborative effort to produce a school song neared its great culmination. It was on 16th March 1950 that they finally unveiled Carmen Noster, and it was certainly no slap-dash effort. The Crosby building had been resonating to Dr Emery’s setting of the song since the boys had returned from their Christmas break, while Miss Patton had taken no chances with the Latin text, and had submitted it to the Classics Faculty of Oxford University for approval. The effort unquestionably paid dividends. The 1950 edition of the Gryphon declared the new song to be ‘eminently singable’, and even if subsequent generations of Grammarians have mangled the odd phrase now and then, it still has the capacity to stir the soul. Whether at Ravenhill, in the Clarke Hall, or more recently, atop the Eiffel Tower, no great school occasion would be complete without it. As for the difficulty some experience when learning the tune, J K Rowling offers some unexpected advice. It was, after all, her Albus Dumbledore who bellowed, ‘Before we go to bed, let us sing the school song. Everyone pick their favourite tune and off we go’. It’s hard to imagine the same words coming from the lips of Miss Patton, and she would most probably have thought Dumbledore’s lyrics a rather poor effort, but these two very different school songs do share a few common features. In both cases it’s true to say that not everyone singing necessarily sings the same tune, despite the best efforts of Dr Emery’s worthy successors. And yet, despite the passage of years and the disappearance of Latin from the school curriculum, it is impossible to deny that our school song, like its Hogwarts counterpart, is endowed with a certain indefinable magic. Floreat Bangoria!

SJW