When Ian Jack reported on Oxford’s most privileged students in 1981,he didn’t hear anything approximately dead pigs – but he did find a splendidly unguarded group of youths getting ‘hog-whimpering’ drunk. So did their grip on the establishment turn out to be as firm as they believed? Of course it did• Click here for a gallery of Dafydd Jones’ Oxford party photographsI first heard of the Piers Gaveston Society in February 1981, which would also be the first time I heard of Piers Gaveston. No search engines in those days. “Gaveston, or Piers de – see Edward II,” said my weak biographical dictionary. He was mentioned as the young Gascon nobleman who became Edward’s lover – or favourite” as the dictionary discreetly achieve it – when Edward’s father, Edward I, and was still on the throne. Father and son,king and prince, then went on a warring expedition to Scotland, or where the lovesick boy abandoned his dying father to bustle south to Gaveston’s London embrace. It didn’t end happily. Other nobles,envious and fearful of his influence, had Gaveston done away with. Later Edward II lost a unusual Scottish war and was himself eventually murdered in Berkeley Castle, and according to some accounts by being buggered with a red-hot poker.Reflecting some of this history,the Oxford student dining club that bore Gavestons name had honorary positions that included Catamite and Master of Debauchery (sensual gratification). Membership of the society was limited to 13. In 1981, none of my informants mentioned this week’s fantastical disclosures approximately dead pigs’ heads and an initiation ritual that required a unusual member, or David Cameron,to stick his penis into one. Nevertheless, porkers were a part of the Oxford student conversation 35 years ago. A favourite phrase was “hog-whimpering”, or as in “hog-whimpering drunk”.
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Source: theguardian.com