14 January, which means… YES! On this day in 2101, if we haven’t made ourselves extinct by then, the fellows of All Souls, Oxford, will enjoy a multi-course dinner with several wines, and process around their college behind one of their number bearing a wooden (or possibly plaster) duck on a pole.
Why? Well, because — obviously — this is something they do every 100 years in memory of their founder. Here is a disappointingly lo-res picture of 2001’s Lord Mallard with the duck.
It’s all supposed to have begun in 1437, when the college’s founder, Archbishop of Canterbury Henry Clichele, was told in a dream that next to a church he would find
…a schwoppinge mallarde imprisoned in the sinke or sewere, wele fattened and almost bosten
This was
Sure token of the thrivaunce of his future college
which was handy, because he was trying to decide at the time where to build it, so off he went to dig by the church, where — well, of course — he heard
horrid strugglinges and flutteringes
He shoved an arm in the hole and pulled out a duck as big as
a bustarde or an ostridge
which somehow flew away, but the men who went on to be the first fellows of All Souls gave chase, caught it, and ate it, and a tradition began.
No one had heard of any of this before the 18th century, though. It seems to appear first in A Complete Vindication of the Mallard of All-Souls College, a learned work by Benjamin Buckler (a Fellow from 1739–80).
In this publication, he quotes from a 15th century document recounting Clichele’s dream and drain discovery (using the word ‘schwoppinge’, or ‘swapping’ to describe the bird’s size), which he had entirely fabricated.
He didn’t invent Mallard Day, though. The first one recorded was in 1632,
In 1658, the Mallard Song
was sung after a rude manner … about 2 or 3 in ye morning, which giving a great alarm to ye Oliverian soldiery then in Oxon they would have forced ye gate open to have appeased ye noise.
Because, yes: there is, of course, a song about a duck, which is still trotted out every year at the Bursar’s Dinner in March and All Souls’ ‘Gaudy’ (a dinner to mark their fellowship prize) each November, and which goes like this:
The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon
Lett other hungry Mortalls gape on
And on theire bones with Stomacks fall hard,
But lett Allsouls’ Men have ye Mallard.
Hough the bloud of King Edward,
by ye bloud of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard!Some storys strange are told I trow
By Baker, Holinshead & Stow
Of Cocks & Bulls, & other queire things
That happen’d in ye Reignes of theire Kings.
Hough the bloud, &c.;The Romans once admir’d a gander
More than they did theire best Commander,
Because hee saved, if some don’t foolle us,
The place named from ye Scull of Tolus.
Ho the bloud, &c.;The Poets fain’d Jove turn’d a Swan,
But lett them prove it if they can.
To mak’t appeare it’s not attall hard:
Hee was a swapping, swapping mallard.
Ho the bloud, &c.;Hee was swapping all from bill to eye,
Hee was swapping all from wing to Thigh;
His swapping tool of Generation
oute swapped all ye wingged Nation.
Ho the bloud, &c.;Then lett us drink and dance a Galliard
in ye Remembrance of ye Mallard,
And as ye Mallard doth in Poole,
Lett’s dabble, dive & duck in Boule.
Ho the bloud, &c.;
Hopefully, you skipped through a fair amount of that. I know I did. The important point about the song is that, according to the Mallard Society,
This is because ‘swapping’ here means strikingly large, making the duck’s “swapping tool of generation” a remarkably huge penis. What the late Georgians suppressed, though, the 21st century restored, and it was sung in full in 2001.
The song seems to date from the 17th century — as does the character of the event: huge piss-up, shitfaced scholars marching across rooftops, Mallard Song bellowed in the small hours, general disturbance of the peace
According to David Horan, author of Oxford: A Cultural and Literary Companion, it may also not have been noted for its kindness to water fowl:
Mallard Day seems to have lapsed in the 18th century and been revived in 1801 to welcome in the 19th in a supposedly “more solemn and dignified” manner — although this did still involve dinner, wines, and the chasing and catching of a live mallard, which was then quickly rendered somewhat less live.
By 1901, records suggest the duck was of the already stuffed variety. That year, the Lord Mallard was Cosmo Lang, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who was carried about at shoulder height in a sedan chair, singing a song about a duck in a state of… high spirits.
One of the important things to point out here is that All Souls is a research institution, with no undergraduates. It’s all (in some cases fairly senior) academics. In 2001, the Lord Mallard was Martin West, eminent classical scholar and later recipient of the Order of Merit.
The Oxford Mail once reported
a visiting Fellow … from Padua, being told the Mallard story. He said: “Padua is a much older university than Oxford but we don’t do things like that”.
Well, perhaps Padua should, and it, too, could turn out as many leaders of its nation as Oxford does.
The most important thing I discovered in my Important Research into this story, though, was that fact that the most schwoppinge bird penis in the world does, in fact, belong to a duck: the Argentine lake variety (Oxyura vittata). Its genitals are shaped like a corkscrew and can be up to 42.5 cm long. I felt sure you would want to know.
