I took Scully's course because I was too intimidated to take a history course in the History department. I was shocked to see only a dozen students at the final exam; everyone else in the crowded Law School auditorium was just visiting. Somehow he made great architecture important and accessible.
--A classmate on the Yale listserv, on legendary lecturer Vincent Scully (1920- ), the architectural historian who is "maybe the greatest lecturer Yale has ever seen."
(To me it's no accident that he's Irish. The name Scully comes from Ó Scalaidhe, derived from sceulaidhe, a hereditary story-teller, and I suspect that "sceulaidhe" in turn is related to the Viking word skald, or bard; the Scullys were found in the neighborhood of the Vikings during the long Norse occupation of Ireland's coasts. The gift of gab, quoi.)
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