History
The chorus was originally written in 1891 as part of a longer Gaelic warcry, by three Gaelic-speaking students: Donald Cameron, F.A. McRae, and another called MacLean, whose first name is not known. The rest of the song was written in 1898 by a student, Alfred Lavell, with the title and The Queen's College Colours after a disappointing loss to the University of Toronto in order to inspire the team. Currently, however, the second, third and fourth verses are rarely sung. In 1985 the original "Boys, go in and win" was changed to "Gaels, go in and win" to make the text gender neutral.
The song is often heard sung by students and alumni when the home team scores a point, goal, touchdown, etc. and at other school events. It is usually sung while forming a chain by linking arms behind each other's backs and performing a low-kicking can-can. The 1892 version uses the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic/John Brown's Body.
Additional stanzas that have fallen out of popular use made reference to historic victories over Yale University, rival McGill University, and the University of Toronto.
Read more about this topic: Oil Thigh
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)