Get them swans!

The swans are back at the lake! Can swan-upping season be far behind? 

Swan-upping is not a sport -- perhaps it's better described as an activity or a job -- that one finds here in the States, but it has been going on for centuries on the Thames. I shall let Dr. Wiki explain:

Swan upping is an annual ceremony in England in which mute swans on the River Thames are rounded up, caught, ringed, and then released.

     By prerogative right, the British Crown enjoys ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water. Rights over swans may, however, be granted to a subject by the Crown (accordingly they may also be claimed by prescription). The ownership of swans in a given body of water was commonly granted to landowners up to the 16th century. The only bodies still to exercise such rights are two livery companies of the City of London. Thus the ownership of swans in the Thames is shared equally among the Crown, the Vintners' Company and the Dyers' Company.

By "ringed," they mean an identifying ring is placed on each swan's leg. In the old days a mark would be carved on each swan's beak, some of them annoying complex -- annoying to the swanherds and, presumably, the swans. The Queen made headlines in July 2009 when she attended the ceremony, the first English monarch to do so in hundreds of years. Of course, it was cancelled last year due to Chinese Death Virus. 

Now, you may be wondering, what do they want with all those swans? Lunch? But no -- while in medieval times one might find a roast swan at a feast, today it's mainly done to check the health of the birds. Like all cool things in England, it has gone squishy. And yet it's still no easy task. Swans are large, larger up close that people might think, and usually ill-tempered and not inclined to be upped. 

The term "upping" seems curious; here is what the Royal Family itself has to say: 

A flotilla of traditional Thames rowing skiffs, manned by Swan Uppers in scarlet rowing shirts and headed by The Queen’s Swan Marker, wearing a hat with a white swan’s feather, row their way steadily up the Thames. ‘All up!’ they cry as a family of swans and cygnets is spotted, and the Swan Uppers carefully position their boats around the swans, lift them from the water and check their health.  The Swan Marker’s iconic five-day journey upriver has been an annual ceremony for hundreds of years, and today it has two clear goals; conservation and education.

Meh -- sounds like a waste of time to me, if you're not going to bother to eat some of them.

If upping you will go, you'll need a good swan hook. These traditionally looked like shepherd's crooks, because you want to get a good grab on the swan but not actually be that close to the damn thing when you do it. You can buy a modern swan hook for a mere $170 at Rescue Technology, and hook all the swans you can reach.

I first got wind of swan-upping via the inimitable Will Cuppy, whose article on the topic -- "Swan Upping, Indeed!" -- had run in The New Yorker in 1935, and was included in his book How to Attract the Wombat. Here's the start of his essay:

I was a fool to give Swan-upping a second thought. I won't say I should have ignored it. You can't ignore a thing that is called Swan-upping. The moment I heard it, I should simply have said, "Swan-upping, eh?" or "Fancy that!" and gone about my business, instead of spending an afternoon in the Public Library reading about Swans.

     Swan-upping sounds like a custom that should have been quietly dropped around the time of, say, Ethelred the Unready. But it has not been dropped -- that's the whole point. Indeed, it flourishes, quite as it did on July 16th, 1308, when Edward II issued a commission of oyer and terminer about some Swans belonging to John de Fitzgerald, who kept his birds on the Waveny, at Mendham, Suffolk.

Maybe I too was a fool to give swan-upping any notice, but he's right; once you've seen it, it makes you think. Sorry about that.