Probably also by Eagleton, and to the tune of "Shoals of Herring":

It was on a fair and a pleasant day
Down the High I heard a voice call, "Terry!"
And I turned around, saw a small dark Warden
Who said, "Let me full you full of sherry."

Well, though I don't drink, yet I'm never rude,
And I must have knocked back twenty glasses,
When he coyly coughed and he shyly whispered,
"Would you like to join the ruling classes?"

"We can rig you out in a cap and gown,
We can take those charming jeans and burn them,
Give deportment lectures in donnish gestures
And a set of Oxford vowels: just lean them.

"Well, the work," he said, "It is pretty hard,
Grouse and pheasant every night grow boring,
We live dingy lives, glumly swapping wives,
Trying to lecture through the sounds of snoring.

"Now we've heard," he said, "That you're rather Red,
But that's fine if you behave with prudence.
You can smoke your pot, you can be a Trot
But just don't incite those bloody students.

"And when they ask you, as they tend to do,
Why we pay our staff such lousy wages,
Why we dine on crab while they at raw cabbage -
Tell then they can all get stuffed – we're sages."

Well, they rigged me out in a cap and gown,
And since then I guess I've been quite prudent,
But I must admit, hearing all their shit,
That I'd rather be a bloody student.

More to come.

Jon Bartlett