22 Nov 2014

The Game

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YalevHarvard

Yale plays Harvard today. In connection with which, a bit of history. In the old days, Yalies encouraged their team’s efforts with a Long Cheer, featuring a quotation from a play by Aristophanes. Frank Gibson, a cheerleader from the Class of ’48 instructs Peter Salovey, then Dean, in the Long Cheer.

I’m afraid it was already extinct by 1966 when I arrived as a freshman.

“I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes.”

–the Modern Major General in The Pirates of Penzance.

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David Iams

The cheer was Breckakek-coex-coex, as I recall from memory. It wass meant to be the the frogs’ choral croak. (I have most of the Loeb classical library but can not put hands on the Aristophanes volume.
Anyway, it also was preserved by Lorenz Hart in The Boys From Syracuse.” where the men’s chorus sings: “Give’ em the axe, the axe the axe.”
I cheered for Harvard. David Iams, Princeton ’59



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