yroleans

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

The Baron received news that a certain group of young men who drank too much and roamed around late at night singing songs and serenading women. They called themselves the Tyroleans. The group consisted of a dozen young men from well-to-do families who were home from the university on vacation. They seemed harmless enough, but were a nuisance to people who go to sleep at normal hours.

What seemed odd about the behavior of the Tyroleans was that once they helped one of the young men gain the romantic interest of the girl they serenaded in song, they would then do everything to break up the romance that had developed.

The Baron asked his chief advisor, Professor Hamblin, about this unusual behavior of university students home for vacation. Did the Professor remember any of this sort of behavior at Cambridge University where he taught for many years? Professor Hamblin said he had not heard of anything like this.

Male bonding and making friends at the university is common. But when a romance could possibly break up the group, the young men got worried and tried to put an end to it. They rarely succeeded. If the romance was real, then the Tyroleans had to look for a replacement for the member who was now hopelessly in love.

That is the way it works. After the university years, the job comes next and a wife soon follows. They raise children and hope to enroll them in the same university they attended. And so life goes on with or without the singing Tyroleans.