Chapter 14: Oswestry

The Inventor of Spoonerisms

But the best piece of information I got at the Heritage Centre was about one of its former alumni - one William Spooner, who was a pupil at the Grammar School in Victorian times and who is, of course, the man responsible for that piece of verbal dexterity known as a spoonerism. In this linguistic somersault a well-oiled bicycle becomes a well-boiled icicle, conquering kings become kinkering kongs, and slips of the tongue become tips of the slung.

William Archibald Spooner was an unusual-looking man, born an albino with poor eyesight and a head too large for his body. Nevertheless he was an outstanding scholar and, after his time at Oswestry Grammar School, he began a sixty-year association with New College in Oxford. After completing his studies, he became a lecturer in history, philosophy and divinity, and from 1903 to 1924 was Warden. He was apparently very absent-minded and once invited a lecturer at New College to tea in order to meet the new Fellow in Archaeology.

"But I am the new Fellow in Archaeology," protested the man, whose name was Casson.

"Never mind," said Spooner. "Come all the same."

On another occasion, after preaching a long sermon one Sunday, he looked up at his student congregation and said:

"In the sermon I have just preached, whenever I said Aristotle, I meant St Paul."

And in another sermon he allegedly launched the following spoonerism:

"Which of us has not felt in his heart a half-warmed fish?"

Another time, when officiating at a wedding, he said to a hesitant bridegroom:

"Son, it is now kisstomary to cuss the bride."

And once, on the occasion of some royal success or other, he raised a toast to Her Majesty Queen Victoria with the following words:

"Three cheers for our queer old dean!"

But my favourite is this series of spoonerisms used in a rebuke to a badly behaved student:

"You have tasted a whole worm. You have hissed my mystery lectures. You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle. You will leave by the town drain."

Now I don't believe that anyone could be so verbally infelicitous and there is some evidence to suggest that many of these spoonerisms were student inventions but they no doubt echoed this unfortunate habit of their inventor. Spooner, however, had the misfortune to have to live with the fact that he would be remembered forever by crossword compilers and other students of linguistic matters for this habit. The term spoonerism was actually included in the Oxford English Dictionary of 1919 - eleven years before Spooner himself died.

I don't know how you cope with something like that and I don't expect I shall ever have to. But poor old Spooner, the child of Oswestry Grammar School, will always be remembered not for the worthy life he led but for the verbal slips he may or may not have made.

Sod rest his goal.

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