Saltings were festive ceremonies which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, initiated Cambridge and Oxford freshmen into the academic and social communities of their individual colleges.
Nevertheless, elements of the tradition are preserved in the texts and may be amplified by students' diaries, tutors' account books, and university statutes regulating the custom.
The earliest known reference to the custom, dated 1509-10, is the record of a salting payment made by John Fisher on behalf of his protégé Gilbert Latham of Christ's College, Cambridge.
[3] At Cambridge salting ceremonies, the "father" delivered a speech in verse addressing each of his "sons" in turn - punning on names, joking about appearances, highlighting personal traits or idiosyncrasies, or telling witty anecdotes about each one.
Simonds D'Ewes reported that at a Pembroke salting, "a great deal of beer, as at all such meetings, was drunk" and that after an evening of overindulgence, he "got but little rest during the night"; which had the salutary effect of making him cautious ever after, as he had never been before, "to avoid all nimiety of this kind.