These kind of stories are a real education for us Brits. We don't have anything like these sonorities in our universities. Maybe they have some link to the old German duelling societies? There have been, though, initiation ceremonies to some jobs, sometimes no more than being soaked with water, sometimes harsher. Apparently it used to be common in UK police for new female recruits to be "stamped on the bare bottom with the station rubber stamp"! Presumably this was so that if they got lost and fell into the hands of criminals or public-spirited citizens, the place they should be returned to was displayed where their finders' attention would naturally be directed. |