A less dangerous though highly unpleasant ordeal to which new Collegers were subjected was the ceremony known as “Pricking for Sheriff.” The boy was laid across the lap of the chief executioner, face downwards, and into a very tightened and thin surface of small-clothes the assistant executioners ran pins, warning the victim that if he screamed louder than his predecessor he would be elected Sheriff and fined a bag of walnuts. At this time the relations between Collegers and Oppidans were not very cordial, the Lower boys amongst the latter in particular often rendering themselves peculiarly objectionable to the King’s scholars, at whom they were wont to jeer. Sometimes some especially aggressive little Oppidan would be caught and taken into Long Chamber, and either soundly thrashed or caned, or else subjected to the blanket-tossing process which has just been mentioned. When this was the case the victim for some time after had good reason to remember his half an hour passed amidst the “Tugs”--which term in those days was far more opprobrious than is at present the case. [SN: THE GOWN] The exact origin of the word “Tug” has never been cleared up. The most popular explanation has always been that it is derived from the Latin word _toga_, a gown, and referred to the black gowns they wore, and still wear, in school. It should here be added that up to 1864 this indispensable appurtenance of a King’s scholar was made of cloth and very heavy. In that year, however, the light material at present in use was introduced, while the length of the gown was somewhat reduced. The old-fashioned gowns contained pockets, which were often receptacles for viands and dainties to be smuggled into Long Chamber. A parody of Gray’s _Ode on Eton College_, written by a King’s scholar in 1798, alludes to this:-- I know my gown when first it flowed An awkward majesty bestowed, When waving fresh each woolly wing That worn-out elbows serve to hide, Or else to hold unknown, unspied, A loaf or pudding in. As far as the writer has been able to ascertain, the top-hat, or in earlier times its predecessor, the cocked or three-cornered one, has always been the head-dress worn by Collegers, though in an illustration[9] representing the Iron Duke being cheered in the quadrangle in the middle of the forties of the last century, the King’s scholars are shown wearing or waving mortar-boards. These, it would appear, existed only in the imagination of the artist. The allusion to worn-out elbows in the ditty given above is significant as to the poverty-stricken appearance of the Collegers, most of whom were then very sorrily dressed. Almost without exception they were boys whose parents had but small means. As a matter of fact College was never intended to be an educational refuge for rich or high-born boys, and, as a highly competent critic has remarked, “A young aristocrat in a serge gown is an anomaly not contemplated by the statutes of the royal founder.”