Swan-Upping

Last week there was Swan-upping on the Thames.

Nearly 750 years ago that traveling Plantagenet, Richard Coeur de Lion, on one of his infrequent visits to England, imported the white swan and decreed that it was a "bird royal," to be owned only by the king and a few favored nobles. Later this privilege was extended to two great medieval corporations, the Honorable Company of Vintners and the Worshipful Guild of Dyers. A ceremony was instituted, whereby representatives of the King, of the Vintners and of the Dyers were to row up the Thames each summer marking and dividing between them all the little brown cygnets which had been hatched that spring.

With diligent disregard for the Labor Government, the New Socialism and the Machine Age, the ceremony of Swan-upping was performed last week just as it always has been. At exactly high tide, six graceful white boats were launched at Southwark Bridge: two for the King, two for the Vintners, two for the Dyers. Most impressive were the King's rowboats. From their sterns hung large white standards bearing the crown and royal cipher. At their prows were small red and white "swan flags." Two Swanherds in scarlet coats rowed each boat. At the tiller of each sat a Swanmaster. whose duty it was to steer and watch for swans. Vintners' and Dyers' skiffs carried the banners of their guilds at the stern and other swan flags (red for the Vintners, blue for the Dyers) at their prow. Supervising the entire Swan-upping was Keeper of the King's Swans, F. T. Turk whose sinecure entitles him to live in St. James's Palace.

Swan-upping differs from many another colorful, archaic British custom in that it is strenuous, gruelling work. Swan-masters and Swanherds must always start their upstream row from Southwark Bridge, despite the fact that no swans have been seen near Southwark for 100 years.

When the country where the swans do live is finally reached then comes the catching and marking of the cygnets, no mean task as anyone can discover by rowing a boat around a pond in pursuit of a small duck. Royal swans are left unmarked. Dyers' swans have one nick cut in their bills, Vintners' swans two nicks. The task is made no easier by the fact that parent swans are extremely aggressive. They can bite and they can kick. They can buffet with their bony wings hard enough to break a man's arm. Yet they must be caught and securely tied in the bottom of the boat before the cygnets can be nicked. To a Swanherd a male swan is not a cock swan, or a drake swan, or even a bull swan: he is a "cob." The female is a "pen." Swift examination shows which is the cob, which the pen. Then the Swanmasters, with pecked fingers (and sometimes with pecked noses) divide the young. If a royal cob should be found married to a Dyers' pen, for example, half the cygnets are left unmarked, half have one nick cut in their bills. The odd cygnet is always marked according to the father.

Swan-upping, though terrifying to swans and painful to Swanmasters, is highly appreciated by Britons who live near the Thames. All last week crowds gathered by bridges and tow-paths to watch the edifying spectacle of scarlet-coated rowers in flagged and painted barges furiously chasing broods of hissing swans back and forth across the river. No useful or practical result whatsoever is achieved by nicking and classifying the swans, since afterward they simply go on swimming, breeding and hissing on the Thames.