The Mallard Song is an ancient tradition of
All Souls' College, Oxford. It is sung every year at the Bursar's Dinner in March and the college's
Gaudy in November and also sung in a separate special ceremony once a century.
The ceremony
In the ceremony, Fellows parade around the college with flaming torches, led by a "Lord Mallard" who is carried in a chair, in search of a giant
mallard that supposedly flew out of the foundations of the college when it was being built in 1437. The procession is led by an individual carrying a duck — originally dead, now just wooden — tied to the end of a vertical pole. The ceremony was last held in 2001, with
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014.
West wrote on ancient Greek music, Gr ...
acting as Lord Mallard. His predecessor as Lord Mallard was
Cosmo Lang
William Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1st Baron Lang of Lambeth, (31 October 1864 – 5 December 1945) was a Scottish Anglican prelate who served as Archbishop of York (1908–1928) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1928–1942). His elevation to Archbishop ...
, who presided over the centenary ceremony in 1901.
The song
The words of the song are as follows:
:The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon
:Lett other hungry Mortalls gape on
:And on theire bones with Stomacks fall hard,
:But lett All Souls' Men have ye Mallard.
:''CHORUS'':
:''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
Stow may refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Stow, Lincolnshire or Stow-in-Lindsey, a village
* Stow of Wedale or Stow, Scottish Borders, a village
* Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, a small town
* Stow, Shropshire or Stowe, a village
* Stow ...
:Of Cocks & Bulls, & other queire things
:That happen'd in ye Reignes of theire Kings.
:''CHORUS''
: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.
:''CHORUS''
:The Poets fain'd Jove turn'd a Swan,
:But lett them prove it if they can.
:To mak't appeare it's not att all hard:
:Hee was a swapping, swapping mallard.
:''CHORUS''
: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.
:''CHORUS''
:Then lett us drink and dance a Galliard
:in ye Remembrance of ye Mallard,
:And as ye Mallard doth in Poole,
:Let's dabble, dive & duck in Boule.
:''CHORUS''
Notes
The word "swapping", repeatedly used in the chorus, is a now-obsolete use from
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
meaning "striking" (as in "what a remarkably big duck that is!").
The identity of King Edward in the song is not known; it could refer to any of the five
English monarchs
This list of kings and reigning queens of the Kingdom of England begins with Alfred the Great, who initially ruled Wessex, one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which later made up modern England. Alfred styled himself King of the Anglo-Sax ...
of that name (three numbered, and two earlier monarchs) up to the time the song was created.
The reference to "Jove turn'd a Swan" refers to the mythical incident in which the
Roman god
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representat ...
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...
transformed himself into a
swan to seduce Queen
Leda.
Not surprisingly, the
Victorians disapproved of the reference to the mallard's "swapping tool of generation", mightier than any other in "ye wingged Nation" (of birds). They dropped this verse from the song, but to the delight of traditionalists, it was restored in the 2001 ceremony.
The last two lines are an invitation to the singers to retire to a convenient watering-hole. They could be paraphrased as saying "in much the same way as the Mallard dives into a pond, let us dive into a drinking bowl."
The centenary ceremony is parodied in Sir Terry Pratchett's novel ''Unseen Academicals'' as "the Chasing of the Megapode", practiced once a century by the wizards of the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork. Similar to the Oxonian ceremony, one member of staff is elected to perform a special role during the ceremony, which, however, is not to preside over the proceedings but to personify the mythical bird megapode itself and be chased by the other wizards. In the ceremony described in the novel, the megapode is played by Professor Rincewind, the Chair of Cruel and Unusual Geography.
Folk Song
A folksong (
Roud
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
1517) found in southern England is an accumulative song about the body of the mallard.
References
External links
*{{cite web, url=http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/events/mallard.php , title=Special Events... The Mallard Society, publisher=All Souls College, accessdate=2009-05-17 , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070605042509/http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/events/mallard.php , archive-date = 2007-06-05
English folk songs
All Souls College, Oxford
English folklore
Music in Oxford
Culture of the University of Oxford