Stripping off to pass exams: A youth spectacle like no other

We’re wandering the cobbled streets of St Andrews, Scotland, intrigued by the crowds of young people rushing about in startling red gowns.

They gather in groups on every street corner, chattering and laughing, their robes rustling in the North Sea breeze.

Red-gowned students gather for their annual procession through St Andrews to mark The Gaudie.Credit: Tony Wright

Might it be graduation day at the city’s famous university, my daughter and I wonder?

“It’s the Gaudie,” an enrobed young woman gaily informs us, as if this explains anything and everything.

The Gaudie, it turns out, is a dazzling annual ritual observed by University of St Andrews students on April 30. We are fortunate to have arrived in the city on that very date.

In solemn procession at dusk, led by a piper, thousands of students troop in their red robes through the town’s streets, bearing flaming torches to East Sands beach, below the ancient, ghostly ruins of St Andrews Cathedral.

Flaming torches aloft, students file to the beach, commemorating a young hero from 1800.Credit: Alamy

There, torches aloft, they walk in line the length of an ancient pier where a wreath was laid in memory of a long-gone student named John Honey.

In 1800, Honey, aged 19, rescued the crew of the small sailing ship, Janet of Macduff, which had run aground off the East Sands.

He had fellow students tie a rope to his body and swam out to the stricken vessel five times, bringing a man back with him each time.

On the young hero’s final trip, the ship’s mast fell on his chest. He went on to complete his university studies and to become a Church of Scotland minister, but died at 32 after suffering prolonged ill health attributed to his injuries while saving the crew.

In the misty dawn, St Andrews students gather on East Sands for the May Dip.Credit: Jessica Wright

But why is this annual memorial called the Gaudie?

As the procession winds its way to the beach, choirs form to sing in Latin a song of archaic origin that is favoured by students across the world.

It is known as Gaudeamus Igitur, or Gaudie for short, and celebrates the idea that youth should be lived and enjoyed because in the end “earth will cover our bones”.

“Gaudeamus igitur, Iuvenes dum sumus,” sing the students. “Let us rejoice while we are young.” Seize the day, you might say.

Students “prepare for exams” by taking the Map Dip.Credit: Getty Images

We trail the students to the pier, enchanted by the lighting of wax torches and the swirl of red robes, as if it were almost a dream.

But this isn’t a dream yet done.

The following morning, before the deep-mist dawn of May 1, hundreds of those same students return to the beach for another ritual – this time without robes.

They strip to bathing suits, run cheering across the sand and leap into the sea, hooting and screaming at the shock of the chill.

This is the May Dip, supposedly a purification, a cleansing of sins in preparation for university exams.

In particular, the Dip is considered the only cure for “Patrick Hamilton’s curse”.

Patrick Hamilton was a 24-year-old student who, in 1528, suffered the ghastly fate of being burnt at the stake for preaching Protestant beliefs.

His initials, PH, are still set into the cobblestones on the spot where he was burned to death outside one of the oldest parts of the university.

Students take a great deal of trouble not to step on the engraved initials. The tradition is that any student who does so will be cursed to fail their degree.

The only way to wash away the Patrick Hamilton curse, it is prescribed, is to take part in the pre-exams May Dip.

In Scotland’s Fife coast climate, a dawn plunge into the North Sea seems an extreme method of preparing for exams. Still, it surely bestows lifetime boasting rights on all who take part.

Most visitors to St Andrews, of course, come for the golf – the Old Course between the town and the beach is considered the home of the game. It has been played on the links there for 600 years.

Others come to drift around the ancient streets of lovely sandstone buildings, contemplating the history.

Many spend time exploring the ruins of the city’s Cathedral of St Andrew, built in 1158. It was the centre of the medieval Catholic Church in Scotland, but fell into decrepitude after the Catholic mass was outlawed during the 16th-century Scottish Reformation.

But for those fortunate enough to find themselves in St Andrews on April 30, the Gaudie is a spectacle like no other. And if you are an early riser, the May Dip is one of the more unusual rituals you might ever witness.

Rooms at the Albany Hotel, across the road from the oldest parts of St Andrews University cost from £181 ($A369) a night. See albanyhotelstandrews.co.uk; visitscotland.com

The writer travelled at his own expense.