A school is held together less by its rules than by its customs. Here are ours, kept faithfully, and in one case for a hundred and fifty years before anyone thought to explain them.
At the Welcome Feast, a small silver seven-pointed star is hidden in the pudding. The girl who finds it is named the year’s Star of Promise. And here is the thing that makes it beautiful:
It could not be sought, or won, or asked for. It simply came to whom it came.
It is the shape on our crest, and the whole idea of the school in a single object. What a girl does with a thing she did not earn turns out to be the making of her.
It tells the legend of St Elowen and her lantern, and the whole school sings it at the Welcome Feast, standing, and rather too loudly. The chorus goes:
Honour our star, let its light never fade,
Guide us through darkness, strong and unafraid.
St Elowen was a maiden of old Cornwall who kept a lantern burning through a night of storm to guide the fishing boats safely home. It is read aloud at the Welcome Feast, every year, and it has been for a hundred and fifty of them. The whole of the school descends from it. You can read where it leads on the Foundress’s page.
There is a light in the window of the Founder’s Tower, and there has been every night for a hundred and fifty years.
The door at the foot of the stair is locked. It is not locked against you personally. It has simply always been locked, in the way that the Cedar has always been bounds and the Duke has always been touched for luck, and no girl now living has ever seen it open.
Somebody goes up. Somebody must. The school does not discuss it.
Earned for effort, conduct, kindness and clean play. Posted on the board every Friday in three bars, and totted towards the House Cup, which is presented on the last day of the summer term. Oak has held it three years running. Elm has not held it for three years. Holly bides its time. There is a good deal more about the houses here.
First the fair, on the lawns: a cake stall, a three-legged race, a tug-of-war against the village (the village wins), and an art competition. And then, at dusk, the parade. Every girl has spent a week in craft lessons making her own lantern, a paper globe painted with stars, with autumn leaves, with her house colours, a small candle flickering inside.
The whole school processes from the Great Hall, around the lawns, and down into the Pinetum, by house, in house colours, a ribbon of living colour, and the grounds are alight with hundreds of dancing flames, and the lanterns bob gently, like stars fallen to earth.
Tradition binds us, girls of St Elowen’s. But tradition is nothing without the spirit behind it, courage, and kindness, and honour. We keep the light, girls. That is our motto, and our whole meaning. May you carry these lanterns not only tonight, but in your hearts always.Miss Winthrop, from the steps of the Great Hall
