The Peregrinus, the law school mascot, was born in 1901 in William S. Simkins's Equity class. Student Russell Savage drew an animal on the blackboard so amusing to Simkins that the professor explained the significance of each of the creature's features.
Shortly thereafter, law students adopted the Peregrinus as their mascot. The law students' arch rivals, the engineering students, destroyed an image of Peregrinus. In 1908, the engineering students, seeking their own mascot, took a wooden statue of a Dutchman holding a stein from a local beer garden and dubbed the statue Alexander Frederick Clare, or “Alec, ” patron saint of engineering students.
Law and engineering students have kidnapped and maimed each other's mascots with some regularity over the years.
"Judge Simkins' story of the Peregrinus," from H.Y. Benedict's 1924 Peregrinusings --
You ask for the origin of Peregrinus. I well remember its birth,--in fact, I was present at the accouchement.
This nondescript sprang fully armed and equipped for its mission not from a mental Jove, but from the disordered brain of a Savage.
Many years ago I was trying to explain to the class in Equity, the origin of the system in Rome and the sources of Equity in the Roman Empire. At the time fledglings just from the high schools were admitted to the Law School. Many of them had never heard of the Roman Empire, and not a few spelled cow with a "K."' They often reminded me of the school boy who when asked by his teacher, when George Washington died, exclaimed, "Is he dead? I didn't know the Old Guy was sick." Well, I explained to them that when Rome conquered a nation it was incorporated into the Roman Empire subject to its own laws and not to the laws of Rome--that the Roman citizen was not subject to the laws of these incorporated nations,--that in due course commerce sprang up between the citizens of Rome and the barbaric nations, and there was no law to determine and settle their contractual relations. The Roman Emperor, to settle the troubles arising out of the fact that there was no law applicable to control their contracts, appointed a Praetor or chancellor to travel among these nations and to settle all disputes without reference to the laws of Rome or of the incorporated Nations, but to do justice and decide all disputes, alone by the conscience of the Praetor. Peregrinating from one nation to the other, he was called a Praetor Peregrinus.
The boneheads of the class evidently thought that a Peregrinus was an internal organ of the body, for they continually greeted each other, "How is your Peregrinus today?" This fact seems to have developed the humorous side of the incident, and Russell Savage developed a concrete expression of it on the black board, and thus the tradition began. Russell drew better than he knew, for the nondescript animal symbolizes both in limb and attitude the maxims in Equity that guide the administration of the system. For instance, on one of the front feet as originally drawn was an Irish ditcher's boot,--indicating the law's protection to the least of mankind. On the other front foot were naked claws, indicating that the greatest of mankind must fear its power. The arched back in the attitude of springing, indicated that the law was ever ready to protect right or prevent wrong. The sharp beak indicated the power to penetrate the mysteries of law, which the true student must obtain by study. The bushy tail indicated that Equity brushes away the technicalities of the law and does justice on the merits.
Introduction written by Josephine Connolly Black, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin.
