Sausages for Tuesday.
Series: Riverrun series, R6
Publisher: Allen Figgis
Published: 1969
Place of publication: Dublin
Language: eng
Number of pages: 149
First sentence: Privacy issue, name deleted.
Description: From Irish News, May 25th, 1999:

One subject invariably comes up in conversation whenever former boarders of St Brendan's meet — the awful food, with watery potatoes, boiled beef and sausages forming a large part of the menu. 

Such a diet, in the words of one black-humoured professor in the college, many moons ago, tended to promote alertness of mind and a lean muscularity. A controversial novel, Sausages for Tuesday, was written about the place in the late 1960s by a former student, Paddy Kennelly, a brother of poet Brendan Kennelly. 

The novel was strongly critical of the regime in the college where corporal punishment was the norm.

Not all punishment was administered by the college authorities, however, and students were known to be sometimes brutal to one another.
Notes: Based on the author's experiences at boarding school in Saint Brendan's College/Seminary, Killarney. The title refers to the fact that the appalling diet in the school reached its zenith with the cheap sausages which were on the 'menu' on Tuesdays, and, considering the dreadful conditions at table, were considered a great delicacy.


The 'novel' is notable for its use of the actual nicknames of some of the many hated and despised priests who lived and taught in the college; names such as Bill, The Beast, Lardy, Hamlet (a particularly obnoxious dean), Johnny Boss, etc. 

The climax of the 'plot' revolves around the practice of urinating into the priests' soup, said to have occurred at least once. 

The priest's refectory was adjacent to the students' dining hall and a particularly enterprising student, a hero in the school as a result of his refusal to accept the ubiquitous sadism and brutality, and subsequently expelled for his disruptive attitude, discovered a method of spiking the priest's food while going undetected: due to the fact that, after his expulsion, he returned as a day-pupil and so knew his way around, and had access to rooms and halls while boarders were otherwise engaged.