From this custom originated the but lately discontinued honours, annually awarded to the head boy in most grammar schools, who had a place in grand civic processions, and for a season at least was magnified into a great personage. The origin of this festival, on St Nicholas day, is involved like most others in much obscurity, and buried in heaps of legendary mysticism. The tale upon which it is said to have been founded is, that in the fourth century St. Nicholas was bishop of Myra, when two young gentlemen arrived at that city on their road to Athens, whither they were going to complete their education. By their father’s desire they were to seek the benediction of the bishop on their way, but as it was late at night when they reached Myra, they deferred doing so till the next morning; but in the meantime the host of the inn at which they were lodging, stimulated by avarice to possess himself of their property, killed the young gentlemen, cut them in pieces, salted them, and purposed to sell them for pickled pork. St. Nicholas, the bishop, being favoured with a sight of these proceedings in a vision, (or, as we should now-a-days express it, by _clairvoyance_) went to the inn, reproached the cruel landlord for his crime, who, confessing it, entreated the saint to pray to heaven for his pardon. The bishop, moved by his entreaties, besought pardon for him, and restoration of life to the children. He had scarcely finished, when the pickled pieces re-united, and the animated youths threw themselves from the brine-tub at the bishop’s feet; he raised them up, exhorted them to ascribe the praise to God alone, and sent them forward on their journey, with much good counsel. Such is the miracle handed down as the cause of the adoption of Saint Nicholas as the patron saint of children. The Eton Montem is considered to be a corruption of the ceremony of electing a boy-bishop, probably changed at the time of the suppression of the religious festivals at the Reformation.