BOYS' PANCAKE SCRAMBLE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 13 April 1912, Page 10

BOYS' PANCAKE SCRAMBLE

Of the many customs which used to cluster round Shrove Tuesday, eating ; pancakes is the only one that remains. Even that, now that pancakes are a standing item in the restaurant bill of fare, has lost its significance, except perhaps to children. 1 Bui 'there is at any rate one place where tossing the pancake, which was once the important part of the pancake custom, is observed with every ceremony. From immemorial days the head cook of Westminster School, escorted by the beadle carrying his mace of office, has appeared in the schoolroom on the morning of Shrove Tuesday. He is always attired in the uniform of his. office — white jacket, apron and cap— and he carries' a frying pan in which reposes n pancake of generous proportions! Having announced himself as "the cook," no advances to the bar which separates the upper school from the lower one, and having given a professional twist to the pancake tosses it over the bar into tho upper school, where it is scrambled for by the boys. That is the; programme- hallowed tyr centuries, but last Shrove Tuesday' it failed in an important point. The pancake did not snake its usual graceful parabola in the air. Perhaps the weather had affected it, possibly the pastry, which, for obvious reasons, ha,& to be of an enduriag quality, 'iatucß^to 1 , the' pan. Whatever the reason,' there was no tossing to ,, speak of. But that .did . not^prevent a very grim nnd determined struggle between the chosen champions from each form in the school. It, was fought out during the allotted time^ and when the headmaster gave the Bignal the twisting mass on the floor disentangled itselt into eighteen boys. ' The lowest of the pile was Mr. FuWon, of the Modern Sixth, and *he cla&ped in his hands a large, fragment of' the pancake — a larger pieoe than could be produoed by. any of his competitors., He 1 hsid already taken the , pancake, and the guinea which is given for its capture, once before. According to tradition, two guineas is .the honorarium for this feat. ' ', ■