The boar’s head at Queen’s College

The boar’s head was once the first dish of every great Christmas dinner, carried in with minstrelsy and a carol, and Aubrey said that before the civil wars it came to the table in gentlemen’s houses with a lemon in its mouth. Queen’s College, Oxford, kept the custom, its bearer singing the old Latin carol Caput apri defero as the head was brought into hall. The college legend, told by Chambers and in the Year Book, was of a student walking in Shotover forest reading Aristotle who was charged by a wild boar and choked it by ramming the book down its throat with the words Graecum est. The Boar’s Head Gaudy is still held at Queen’s.