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The United Kingdom Has A Weird Thing With Swans · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. We have a very special announcement today. We
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Speaker 1: are joined with a close friend of ours and friend
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Speaker 1: of the show. Welcome ours guest super producer Andrew A
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Speaker 1: how a k A cool guy Deluxe Howard. Andrew just
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Speaker 1: we'll keep this part in but usually uh, usually that
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Speaker 1: there's a sound cue after that that sounds cool. I
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Speaker 1: don't know, no, what do you think would be a
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Speaker 1: good sound cue? Something with snaps, sort of like something
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Speaker 1: from the Grease soundtrack, or like the beginning of West
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Speaker 1: Side Story? You know, do don't see us? Do? Do
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Speaker 1: you know? So? Yeah? See here Andrew snaps are the
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Speaker 1: sweet dulcet snaps of Andrew Howard. U a K A
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Speaker 1: swan swan hummingbird, Howard Hurrah a k A big tiens
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Speaker 1: uh a k A tiger foot. Let's just do an
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Speaker 1: episode where we just do a ks for Andrew. I
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Speaker 1: love it a k as for Andrew dot com. Uh,
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Speaker 1: do you know that's my favorite R I M song?
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Speaker 1: You guys? I think is swan Swan Hummingbird off of
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Speaker 1: Life's Switch pageant. I don't really know what it's about,
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Speaker 1: but it's it's it's a very nonsensical classic Michael Stipe lyric,
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Speaker 1: but yeah, it's the lyric is swan swan hummingbird? Hurrah,
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Speaker 1: We're all free now what noisy cats are we? Um?
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Speaker 1: You know? But it's not really about cats or swans
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Speaker 1: or hummingbirds. Um. There's a character named Johnny Red at
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Speaker 1: some point. But today's episode is about one of those things. Uh,
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Speaker 1: mainly the Swans. Yeah, yeah, you know. I I put
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Speaker 1: r E M some of their work in this beautiful,
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Speaker 1: rarefied musical era where lyrics could sound deep and profound
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Speaker 1: and they didn't have to make sense. Shout out to you,
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Speaker 1: Smashing Pumpkins right the fact. Gosh, Okay, before we quote
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Speaker 1: Smashing Pumpkins, I forgot to say, I'm Ben. Longtime listeners,
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Speaker 1: you know most of us from this show, and you
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Speaker 1: probably have heard of Swans because you are right, Noal,
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Speaker 1: today's episode is all about swans, but it's not about
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Speaker 1: all swans, and it's also not about the seminal noise
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Speaker 1: rock band Swans. And it concerns a queen, not Freddie
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Speaker 1: Mercury's queen, but the Queen of England and a river,
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Speaker 1: not all rivers, but the River Tims. Now I have
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Speaker 1: a brief anecdote here. Uh. Once in London, I had
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Speaker 1: the fortune to go to this restaurant that I always
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Speaker 1: dreamed of visiting, a place called St. John. It's famous
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Speaker 1: for serving things that would usually be thrown away, and
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Speaker 1: it's called traditional British cooking, but we're talking about stuff like,
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Speaker 1: you know, sweetbread's, tongue, brains, stuff like that. And that
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Speaker 1: is where for the first time I ate a grouse
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Speaker 1: and I realized that you can indeed eat many many birds.
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Speaker 1: Here in the US we mainly eat chicken right or duck.
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Speaker 1: Once a year bound by tradition, we eat turkey. But
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Speaker 1: back in the day, swan was not just a foul dish,
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Speaker 1: get it that everybody was familiar with, but eating it
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Speaker 1: was a mark of status for a very weird reason. Yes,
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Speaker 1: this is correct. It was a particularly weird reason, sort
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Speaker 1: of a weird historical flex that only the most fortunate
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Speaker 1: amongst the citizens of London town um were able to
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Speaker 1: eat swans. And that's because they actually had to pay
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Speaker 1: a vig to the monarchy in order to consume these
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Speaker 1: illustrious birds, which also, by the way, really cantankerous birds.
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Speaker 1: We have a friend and former colleagues got Benjamin who
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Speaker 1: has a very terrifying story about being dragged by a
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Speaker 1: swan into like a moat situation because it wanted his
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Speaker 1: ice cream cone as a kid, And that to me
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Speaker 1: is just like the stuff of nightmares. Swans are terrible
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Speaker 1: with you on that. Worse than geese, worse than which
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Speaker 1: is saying a lot. I was attacked by a swan
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Speaker 1: once in Dollywood, Uh, and it got my finger. And
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Speaker 1: it was terrified because I had not seen one up
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Speaker 1: close before, and I did not understand that when they're uh,
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Speaker 1: when they're honkers, their bills there terrifying mouthparts are open. Uh.
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Speaker 1: The inside of it looks like the inside of a nightmare.
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Speaker 1: It looks very love crafty. And it got my finger.
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Speaker 1: Swans suffer from a stereotype because in the West, we've
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Speaker 1: always heard the story of the ugly duckling that growed
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Speaker 1: us become a swan. So we all, for some reason
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Speaker 1: assume that they are as nice personality wise as they look,
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Speaker 1: and that could not be further from the truth. They're
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Speaker 1: real pills. M Yeah. The idea of like swans representing
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Speaker 1: elegance and daintiness and and um, what's the word grace,
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Speaker 1: you know, like swan lake and the whole balletic the
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Speaker 1: those a whole move. I think it must be originated
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Speaker 1: from swan, like the dying swan, which is sort of
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Speaker 1: it's cliche ballet move where you sort of, you know,
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Speaker 1: like crouched down slowly as as though you are a
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Speaker 1: dying swan. Fascinating stuff. The way we associate these absolute
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Speaker 1: demonic creatures with all these positive traits. You're right, then
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Speaker 1: the inside of their mouth it's like they're ringed with
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Speaker 1: weird rows of like Cathulu teeth or something like. It's
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Speaker 1: it's really unsettling. But now we're arry in the lead. Here.
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Speaker 1: We said it and then got distracted by the nightmare
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Speaker 1: that is a swan. But yeah. The Queen of the
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Speaker 1: United Kingdom, also known as the Head of the Commonwealth,
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Speaker 1: also known as the Defender of the Faith, also the
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Speaker 1: Commander in Chief of the British Armed Forces, Sovereign of
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Speaker 1: the Most Noble Order of the Garter, My God, Sovereign
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Speaker 1: of the most Ancient and most Noble Order of the Thistle. Um.
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Speaker 1: These are all titles bestowed upon Elizabeth the Second, the
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Speaker 1: Queen of England. Also another one, perhaps lesser known, is
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Speaker 1: the senior of the Swans. It's true this is something
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Speaker 1: that may be unfamiliar to a lot of our non
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Speaker 1: British listeners. We like how Arthur McGregor explains it in
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Speaker 1: an issue of anthropose Logica. It turned out that swans
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Speaker 1: in this part of the world, swans were the subject
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Speaker 1: of a big controversy debate who owns them, who breeds them,
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Speaker 1: who gets to eat them. British courts and town councils
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Speaker 1: had been arguing about this since the Middle Ages. By
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Speaker 1: thirteen sixty one the crown had appointed a royal swan herd,
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Speaker 1: and by fourteen sixty three there was a full time
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Speaker 1: swan moat, and commissioners were appointed there to hear entirely
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Speaker 1: swan related disputes. In my head that dick Wolf, if
7:31
Speaker 1: you're still listening to the show, this is law and
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Speaker 1: order Swan Court, do right, like you can feel me
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Speaker 1: there on the brainstorming. But the there's a legend behind it.
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Speaker 1: There is a legend that a mute swan was introduced
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Speaker 1: to Britain by Richard the First In the twelfth century,
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Speaker 1: and that he brought swan's back with him from his
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Speaker 1: campaigns in the Crusades. Wait, like a swan that couldn't honk,
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Speaker 1: A honkless swan. That sounds okay, I'm not, I'm not,
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Speaker 1: I'm I don't. I'm here for that. Honestly, the honk
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Speaker 1: is part of the thing that squigs me out about him. Yeah,
8:09
Speaker 1: just google swan tongues and be prepared. Uh, if you're
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Speaker 1: running low on some cosmic horror content. It's interesting. So
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Speaker 1: that was the legend people told each other about how
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Speaker 1: swans came to be, especially in the Thams. But today
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Speaker 1: ornithologists believe the swan was probably native to the country,
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Speaker 1: and archaeological evidence of these creatures dates as far back
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Speaker 1: as ten thousand years ago. So Richard the First may
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Speaker 1: have brought one honkless swan with him after the Crusades,
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Speaker 1: but they were already well established in the country beforehand.
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Speaker 1: Oh real quick, this could be off micro Maybe it's
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Speaker 1: not a mute swan. Is not a mute swan, it's
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Speaker 1: just the name of the species. It's called a mute swan.
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Speaker 1: Not let a ride, not a uncless to water at all.
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Speaker 1: Still quite noisy. Uh yeah, but that's that's the species
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Speaker 1: of swell. That's that's that's the type of swan you
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Speaker 1: would normally picture, you know, big fluffy winged bodies, swan
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Speaker 1: like neck and a big orange beak and uh you know,
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Speaker 1: I'm looking at images of swans, and you know, when
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Speaker 1: you you see them frozen like that, some of them
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Speaker 1: are like have their little necks intertwining. There is some
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Speaker 1: romantic qualities to this imagery, I get, but it definitely
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Speaker 1: doesn't match up to the reality of being chased by
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Speaker 1: a bloodthirsty swan. We're gonna let this stuff go and
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Speaker 1: tell the dang story, but I'm a little bit triggered
9:34
Speaker 1: by this episode. I'm not gonna let it go. Even
9:36
Speaker 1: if it wasn't hockey, that's not enough. I mean that
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Speaker 1: under let us not forget that, under that cute orange bill,
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Speaker 1: there is something that looks like an ancient creature from
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Speaker 1: the darkness between the stars. That tongue is unclean. Anyhow,
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Speaker 1: you're right, well, you're right, we should soldier on, we
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Speaker 1: should sail away. Sail away. Swans were luxury goods. We
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Speaker 1: know that from least the twelfth century onward. You really
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Speaker 1: wanted to flex on someone. In the days before a rolex,
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Speaker 1: you walked around with the squad and people were like,
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Speaker 1: WHOA V I P the It's actually been referred to
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Speaker 1: as the medieval equivalent of having a Rolex, or even
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Speaker 1: driving a Lamborghini or Lambeau for the cool, obnoxious people
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Speaker 1: in the crowd. If you owned a swan, people would
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Speaker 1: often just assume that you were of the noble class.
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Speaker 1: It was up there with running hounds or flying a hawk,
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Speaker 1: you know, maybe being a falconer. And the reason that
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Speaker 1: they were so such you know features at these big
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Speaker 1: banquets is because they literally were like a show piece
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Speaker 1: because they would include the skin and the feathers and
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Speaker 1: they would have like incense shoved in its horrible hellish
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Speaker 1: ma you know um, and it would be like a centerpiece.
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Speaker 1: Like we've talked about this. There's a really cool British
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Speaker 1: chef named Heston Blumenthal and he has a show called
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Speaker 1: Heston Blumenthal's Feast where he recreates crazy, elaborate, uh you know,
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Speaker 1: kind of showy dinners from different eras in history, and
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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he does some spin on this kind
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Speaker 1: of Christmas Swan dinner. But they would be served, uh,
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Speaker 1: two huge numbers of people. Um, and there would be
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Speaker 1: an equally equally huge number of swans, like forty swans.
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Speaker 1: I think we're ordered for Henry the Third's Christmas dinner. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And that was in twelve forty seven at Winchester Cathedral. Um.
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Speaker 1: So back to Elizabeth and Elizabeth. Elizabeth the first swan
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Speaker 1: was quite popular as a feast dish, especially when you
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Speaker 1: really went extra with it and stuffed it with like
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Speaker 1: nine other birds, which was the origination of what is
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Speaker 1: known today as the tur ducan. Uh. But this is
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Speaker 1: like that on a much more a laborate and grandiose
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Speaker 1: kind of scale. Right. Uh. It's like, oh, I guess,
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Speaker 1: so strange and macabre really, you know, like I did
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Speaker 1: nothing the thing apppetizing about that. Nothing advertising to me
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Speaker 1: about like a Russian nesting doll of dead roasted birds.
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Speaker 1: I'm into it. Yeah, yeah, I'll get down on a rushka.
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Speaker 1: You know. It's got a let's see, it's got a goose,
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Speaker 1: a duck, a mallard, a chicken, a peasant, a partridge,
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Speaker 1: a pigeon, and a woodcock. Uh. That's in descending order.
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Speaker 1: And I think that can feed thirty people. It's still
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Speaker 1: not in the class of the fabled stuffed camel, which
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Speaker 1: we might talk about in a weird aside in the
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Speaker 1: future episode. Hey, and if you if you get to
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Speaker 1: the woodcock and you get if you might find the prize.
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Speaker 1: There's a prize inside the wood cock. That's how you
12:53
Speaker 1: know you that's that. Yeah, and then you're and then
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Speaker 1: you're crowned King of the party, bell of the ball.
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Speaker 1: But still the Queen. No, definitely not the queen, um yeah, none,
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Speaker 1: not yeah, she is the the original bay you know.
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Speaker 1: Um so yeah. And and it would be stuffed in
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Speaker 1: that ascending order, uh you know, seasons and and such,
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Speaker 1: and then cooked, um, and then it would be redressed
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Speaker 1: and again may it would it would be made to
13:20
Speaker 1: look It's like taxidermy. It's a weird combination of like
13:23
Speaker 1: taxidermy and uh and cheffery, which you can I keep
13:27
Speaker 1: coming out of his word, but really maccabre like very
13:30
Speaker 1: like just kind of it just doesn't nothing appetizing about this.
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Speaker 1: But again this is coming from somebody who I only
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Speaker 1: want to see a bird. If it doesn't look like
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Speaker 1: a bird anymore, it just looks like, you know, delicately
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Speaker 1: sliced chicken on my plate. But when you start introducing
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Speaker 1: the eyes and the beak and the neck, it really
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Speaker 1: turns me off from eating bird. There's an interesting thing here.
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Speaker 1: I was fascinated by medieval cuisine for a long time.
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Speaker 1: In the rarefied air of royal feast or feast held
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Speaker 1: by very well to do people, we would see this
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Speaker 1: tendency to prize presentation, sometimes over taste. There was this
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Speaker 1: whole fad of making one animal look or taste like
14:17
Speaker 1: another animal. Kind of in a way, it's an alchemy
14:20
Speaker 1: that is a that is a predecessor of the later
14:24
Speaker 1: practice we call molecular gastronomy today with you know where
14:27
Speaker 1: we have our pals like Richard Blaze pioneering all these
14:31
Speaker 1: strange new techniques. But let's talk turkey. A matter of fact,
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Speaker 1: let's talk swan. How did they actually taste. The good
14:40
Speaker 1: news here is that if you are someone like me
14:43
Speaker 1: who feels that turkey is not to burn any bridges here,
14:48
Speaker 1: turkey is a little overrated and it can be tough
14:51
Speaker 1: to cook a hole when well, you will be perhaps
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Speaker 1: surprised to note that people who have eaten swans in
14:58
Speaker 1: the past say they're pretty tasty. It's more more like
15:02
Speaker 1: a duck than like a goose, Right, how do that?
15:05
Speaker 1: I've had goose either, But I really love duck because
15:08
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, I don't really care for the
15:10
Speaker 1: word gaming. It's not appealing to me, but that people
15:13
Speaker 1: do use that to describe it, and it tastes a
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Speaker 1: little more I don't know whild I guess even that's weird.
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Speaker 1: I'm trying to I'm trying to put a a metric
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Speaker 1: on what that means. Like dark meat, I think your
15:24
Speaker 1: tastes a little more I don't know, like it's still
15:27
Speaker 1: got blood in it or something like a little iron ere.
15:30
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not doing a very good job here,
15:32
Speaker 1: but yeah, like I think duck almost tastes more like
15:36
Speaker 1: steak than it does like chicken or something like that.
15:38
Speaker 1: That's that, That's what I'm gonna get. Yeah, So it
15:40
Speaker 1: almost is like splitting the difference between like what the
15:43
Speaker 1: U mommy, and the quality of like red meat might
15:45
Speaker 1: be than what like purely white meat or chicken. You know,
15:48
Speaker 1: every run of the mill meat might taste like somewhere
15:50
Speaker 1: in between those two. Um, because it was there's some
15:53
Speaker 1: interesting variants in some of the descriptions of eating swan
15:57
Speaker 1: that comes from a Mental Floss article and a range
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Speaker 1: from tough to chewy to even a little fishy, which
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Speaker 1: is weird. I guess that makes sense because they are
16:07
Speaker 1: water dwelling creatures that eat fish. Uh, then this is
16:11
Speaker 1: a good one. The idea of it being tasting like
16:15
Speaker 1: goose flavored venison, which is all about the texture, I
16:18
Speaker 1: think venison really is. Uh again, it's not quite like
16:23
Speaker 1: a steak. Venison is almost somewhere between like a chicken
16:26
Speaker 1: and a steak. It's it's all about texture. But the
16:28
Speaker 1: idea of it being goose flavored is interesting. It's the
16:31
Speaker 1: gaming nature. Venison is commonly held in the West as
16:35
Speaker 1: the number one example of something tasting quote unquote gaming.
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Speaker 1: It's just it might smell stronger, it may may have
16:43
Speaker 1: a boulder flavor. So maybe they're saying that swan has this. Uh. Swan,
16:50
Speaker 1: unlike duck, really pops in your mouth. I love things
16:54
Speaker 1: that pop in my mouth. Uh. You ever had bibubba
16:57
Speaker 1: tea with the popping Bubba's that they actually like? You
17:00
Speaker 1: buy them and they like shoot out weird juice in
17:02
Speaker 1: your mouth. I'm a fan that really weird some people out.
17:05
Speaker 1: But no It's true. Um, I have had a venison burger,
17:09
Speaker 1: but I don't know that I've actually eaten like a
17:11
Speaker 1: like a big old cut of venison. But yeah, I
17:13
Speaker 1: need to expand my meat horizons. But the thing about
17:16
Speaker 1: the swan though, is it was more than just kind
17:19
Speaker 1: of weird culinary flex It was like it was it
17:24
Speaker 1: was very much entrenched in the British identity. You know.
17:28
Speaker 1: It was something that was a point of pride and
17:31
Speaker 1: something that even today, I mean people refer people from
17:34
Speaker 1: Britain referred to going to see the swans all the time,
17:37
Speaker 1: and it's like very much something that's wrapped up in
17:40
Speaker 1: the identity of living in London, um, and you know,
17:43
Speaker 1: as a country in the UK. In a fourteen nineties
17:47
Speaker 1: six the Secretary of the Venetian Ambassador wrote of the
17:53
Speaker 1: swans in London, they were truly a beautiful thing to behold,
17:57
Speaker 1: one of two thousand tame swans upon the River Thames.
18:01
Speaker 1: Then during Elizabeth the first reign uh a German lawyer
18:05
Speaker 1: by the name of Paul hen Ser described all of
18:08
Speaker 1: these swans as living quote in great security, nobody daring
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Speaker 1: to molest, much less kill any of them under penalty
18:17
Speaker 1: of a large fine um. And this is from Smithsonian
18:20
Speaker 1: mag article about the fast d any history of the
18:24
Speaker 1: British thrones swans um. So what was the process, like, ben,
18:28
Speaker 1: if you did want to eat one, because the whole
18:31
Speaker 1: point of this episode, I think, is that they were
18:33
Speaker 1: under the guard and care of the British crown. So
18:36
Speaker 1: it's like, did you buy one and raise them yourself?
18:39
Speaker 1: For like, I mean, surely the swans in the Thames
18:42
Speaker 1: weren't up for grabs in that way. Right. Well, one
18:45
Speaker 1: thing that human history has taught me, as well as
18:48
Speaker 1: many of us listening today, is that human beings will
18:51
Speaker 1: resort to the most ridiculous lengths to perpetrate a class system. Right,
18:57
Speaker 1: we can't forget this is the same species that has
19:00
Speaker 1: outlawed certain haircuts and certain colors based on socio economic status.
19:05
Speaker 1: So swans were considered sort of the default property of
19:09
Speaker 1: the monarchy. They were called royal foul. But the rules
19:14
Speaker 1: started to uh evolve in the fourteen hundreds. At the
19:19
Speaker 1: beginning of the fifteenth century, if you were wealthy enough,
19:23
Speaker 1: you could buy the right to own, sell, and eat swans.
19:29
Speaker 1: But to do this, first off, you had to be
19:33
Speaker 1: a landowner. Secondly, you had to be pretty well off.
19:36
Speaker 1: And third you had to buy something called a swan mark,
19:41
Speaker 1: and you would carve this swan mark into the beaks
19:44
Speaker 1: of your birds. Later, in fourteen a d two the
19:50
Speaker 1: Crown made this like solid law. Only landowners of a
19:55
Speaker 1: certain income can keep these birds. And this is funny
19:59
Speaker 1: to me because one thing I've always found fascinating about
20:03
Speaker 1: London is, uh, the sheer amount of taxation for various
20:07
Speaker 1: things like there's a wind, there was a window tax.
20:10
Speaker 1: I think there was a television tax. Uh, and this
20:13
Speaker 1: was the swan tax. So really all you got for
20:18
Speaker 1: paying this fee was the right to make this carving
20:21
Speaker 1: or brand on your swan beaks. Uh. And if you
20:25
Speaker 1: didn't do this, there would be consequences. It's funny because, uh,
20:30
Speaker 1: it wasn't always the same mark, right, it was a
20:32
Speaker 1: specific kind per like swan mark agreement. That's right. There
20:37
Speaker 1: were actually hundreds of different types of swan marks, and
20:41
Speaker 1: you can even find entire books dedicated to keeping track
20:46
Speaker 1: of all of the various ones. And they would be
20:48
Speaker 1: different symbols, almost like a family crest, right, you know
20:51
Speaker 1: that you would think of or like a tartan or
20:53
Speaker 1: whatever like in Scotland. Um, things like swords, their crossbows
20:56
Speaker 1: or kind of you know, elaborate calligraphic kind of marketings
21:01
Speaker 1: like heraldic symbols, and and then eventually it got a
21:04
Speaker 1: little more simple and they just made them letters. But yeah,
21:07
Speaker 1: every year something called a swan master, of which there
21:11
Speaker 1: were many, um, but they were designated as like the
21:14
Speaker 1: keepers of the swans would row on a boat out
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Speaker 1: through the open waters to determine the ownership of every
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Speaker 1: single mark on on these these swans beaks and make
21:25
Speaker 1: sure that they knew who owned them and any of
21:28
Speaker 1: the unmarked birds belonged to the crown. So this is
21:31
Speaker 1: they totally answered my question, ben Uh. It definitely was
21:35
Speaker 1: a super elaborate dare I say overly so process, um,
21:40
Speaker 1: But only those who owned that right. That again was
21:45
Speaker 1: a very convoluted set of criteria that went into your
21:48
Speaker 1: ability to own that right. Um could own swans, and
21:53
Speaker 1: they were very, very expensive. It's almost like think of
21:54
Speaker 1: it as like buying like a like a taxi medallion
21:57
Speaker 1: or something you know you were investing in a long term,
22:00
Speaker 1: like because you know, if you had a swan, I
22:02
Speaker 1: guess you could breathe this one or I don't know, like,
22:05
Speaker 1: was it limited to just that one swan in the
22:07
Speaker 1: life of that swan. Surely you could do with that
22:10
Speaker 1: swan what what you wanted and use it to create
22:13
Speaker 1: more swans. Yeah, you had to bring him, but you
22:15
Speaker 1: had to be sure to markham back when they were
22:17
Speaker 1: young swans or sicknets, because otherwise they automatically belong to
22:21
Speaker 1: the monarchy. It's weird. So much legal work went into this,
22:27
Speaker 1: like local councils would have swan collectors that would round
22:32
Speaker 1: up wild swans. Adam two flocks already talked about law
22:36
Speaker 1: and order swancourt Doom Doommom Doom, doom, doom hawk. Uh. There.
22:41
Speaker 1: There's a really fascinating thing in fifteen seventy called the
22:46
Speaker 1: Audor of Swans. It's a legal document that sort of
22:50
Speaker 1: articulates the rules relating to these birds specifically, and it
22:56
Speaker 1: shows us just how high the finds were for people
23:00
Speaker 1: who were who were flouting the law. They said, if
23:03
Speaker 1: any person do raise out counterfeit or or to the
23:07
Speaker 1: mop of any swan, they shot a sappha one years
23:10
Speaker 1: and prison months. And this is where I don't know
23:13
Speaker 1: about you guys. This is where I learned about a
23:15
Speaker 1: crime I had never heard of. If you commit swantage,
23:20
Speaker 1: that is killing swantage, if you kill an adult swan,
23:23
Speaker 1: or if you even steal the eggs, then you will
23:26
Speaker 1: also be punished with a very harsh sentence, likely imprisonment,
23:30
Speaker 1: because we have to remember, you know, many people over
23:34
Speaker 1: history at this point might be killing adult birds because
23:38
Speaker 1: they had to feed their family, or stealing eggs for
23:40
Speaker 1: the same reason. That's exactly right. That's the kind of
23:42
Speaker 1: thing that you hear about in like fairy tales, you know,
23:44
Speaker 1: where the father of the poverty stricken family steals a
23:47
Speaker 1: single egg from the queen's you know, uh flock or
23:52
Speaker 1: whatever and then gets cursed by an evil witch or
23:56
Speaker 1: something like that. But this this was a little bit
23:58
Speaker 1: more grounded. Where you were prison and there was a
24:01
Speaker 1: thing called, I love this term, a swan's moot that
24:05
Speaker 1: was an event that would be convened in order to
24:09
Speaker 1: deal with various issues that would arise in terms of
24:13
Speaker 1: swan ownership. So it really was like a whole subsystem
24:17
Speaker 1: of of legal mumbo jumbo that went into this whole
24:20
Speaker 1: idea of swan ownership. Um. It's fascinating. And there were
24:26
Speaker 1: a couple of exceptions though, to which lower class people
24:30
Speaker 1: might have access to swans. Because of the whole system
24:35
Speaker 1: being designed, you know, for the the super wealthy, oftentimes
24:40
Speaker 1: the barrier to hustry for swan ownership just wasn't reachable
24:44
Speaker 1: for the lower class. If you weren't an officially recognized
24:48
Speaker 1: swan mark bearer, then it was forbidden to eat, to
24:51
Speaker 1: sell swans, or to breathe swans. Like. It wasn't just
24:54
Speaker 1: like the swans in the Thames. It was the idea
24:57
Speaker 1: of swans right, like as an animal, which is that's crazy, Like,
25:02
Speaker 1: that's not something that we have any equivalent for. I
25:05
Speaker 1: don't believe. Well, I mean maybe it was certain exotic
25:08
Speaker 1: animals that are like not technically right, that's right, that's yeah,
25:12
Speaker 1: maybe so, but that but that more has to do
25:14
Speaker 1: with the fact that those are endangered and there's conservation,
25:17
Speaker 1: which we will get to on this issue as well
25:19
Speaker 1: in a little bit. But um, yeah, it's true. If
25:22
Speaker 1: you weren't an officially recognized swan keeper, you weren't allowed
25:25
Speaker 1: to sell them, you couldn't hunt them, uh, and you
25:29
Speaker 1: certainly couldn't eat them, and and god forbid, you'd try
25:32
Speaker 1: to steal one or kill one that was actually in
25:34
Speaker 1: the Thames. Uh, you would be quick, work would be
25:37
Speaker 1: made of you, my friend, my historical friend. But there
25:41
Speaker 1: was an exception made for certain more Let's say, you
25:44
Speaker 1: know blue collar workers, um uh, winemakers and dyers literally
25:51
Speaker 1: folks who died clothing and things. Uh, there were these
25:54
Speaker 1: kind of guilds that were given a pass two participate
26:00
Speaker 1: aiden swan ownership. And can you unpack this a little
26:02
Speaker 1: bit for us? It's really interesting and in a little
26:04
Speaker 1: bit complicated. Yeah, so this is a This is another
26:08
Speaker 1: one of my favorite historical aspects of London. Inside London,
26:14
Speaker 1: there's something called the City of London. They're different. The
26:18
Speaker 1: City of London has these powerful historical organizations called livery companies.
26:25
Speaker 1: They're usually styled the Worshipable Company of insert here, so
26:30
Speaker 1: like the worshipble Company of dyers or the Worshipable Company
26:33
Speaker 1: Inventors or so on. They've had this really strange relationship
26:39
Speaker 1: with the monarchy that over the centuries has become defined
26:43
Speaker 1: by tradition and numerous exceptions to the rules of the day.
26:48
Speaker 1: So the act of the monarchy to exempt the inventors
26:52
Speaker 1: and dyers to essentially allow them to have swans without
26:55
Speaker 1: going to jail is one more example of the carrot
27:00
Speaker 1: and the carrot and stick approach that the monarchy used
27:04
Speaker 1: to work with the trade guilds. Because we have to
27:07
Speaker 1: remember this is while the mercantile classes on the rise,
27:11
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You can be wealthy and
27:13
Speaker 1: you don't automatically have to be a duchess or a
27:18
Speaker 1: king or a queen. So we don't know exactly why
27:22
Speaker 1: they were granted this exemption, but we we can safely
27:27
Speaker 1: assume it was meant to strengthen that working relationship, and
27:31
Speaker 1: then over time other people got involved. The Ilchester family
27:37
Speaker 1: is the third exception. They're one of the only three
27:41
Speaker 1: entities who have a right to the Swans, the Dyers,
27:45
Speaker 1: the Venors, and the Ilchesters. I would imagine, if we're
27:49
Speaker 1: just wildly speculating and making things up, that maybe the
27:53
Speaker 1: Dyers were giving them a royal discount on fancy clothes.
27:59
Speaker 1: And I think getting in good with the Ventors speaks
28:02
Speaker 1: for itself, because who doesn't like to knock a few
28:06
Speaker 1: back when you're running merry Old England. As for the
28:09
Speaker 1: Ilchester family, that maybe a story for another day. Eventually,
28:19
Speaker 1: swan kind of transition to this traditional food right. It
28:23
Speaker 1: wasn't swan. It's not just for feast anymore. But it
28:27
Speaker 1: became part of Christmas celebrations, you know, goose or swan,
28:31
Speaker 1: it did. And I really like this notion of a
28:34
Speaker 1: status meat. I just have to say, I guess maybe
28:37
Speaker 1: what today would be a status meat like filet mignon.
28:40
Speaker 1: You know, is there like an expensive cut of like
28:43
Speaker 1: rack of lamb or something like that, it would be
28:44
Speaker 1: a status meat. Or the law tiger tongues well endangered species.
28:50
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think we should eat them,
28:52
Speaker 1: but shark fin soup the cruelest status meat of them all.
28:59
Speaker 1: A how on the k how I'll take it, Okay,
29:03
Speaker 1: we'll do it. Um Our kobe beef, you know, something
29:07
Speaker 1: that's like a very raised in a very specific way,
29:11
Speaker 1: very rarefied conditions, fed with a certain type of grain
29:14
Speaker 1: or what have you. Um, that would be maybe today's
29:17
Speaker 1: equivalent of status meat. Veal caviare totally and they're all
29:21
Speaker 1: quite pricey. Uh. And you know, swan was sort of
29:25
Speaker 1: like it has seen its day in the sun as
29:27
Speaker 1: as as a status meat of the time. Um, it
29:31
Speaker 1: was still a delicacy and used as part of Christmas
29:33
Speaker 1: celebrations up until the eighteenth century. Um, but it was
29:38
Speaker 1: still only legal to kill and eat one if you
29:41
Speaker 1: had that swan mark, and so did kind of remain
29:44
Speaker 1: a luxury good into the Victorian period, when it sort
29:48
Speaker 1: of became a little less cool. Um. You know how
29:51
Speaker 1: fashions are, they're they're very fleeting at times. And now
29:54
Speaker 1: this one, this one stuck around for a pretty pretty
29:56
Speaker 1: pretty good amount of time considering how most trends are. Um.
30:00
Speaker 1: But by the twentieth century, it really wasn't eaten. And
30:04
Speaker 1: the whole idea of swan marks still stuck around, but
30:08
Speaker 1: more as like a almost like a tradition. And then
30:12
Speaker 1: it stopped. So I sort of started being red flagged
30:15
Speaker 1: by a lot of like organizations that look at animal
30:18
Speaker 1: cruelty and said that it wasn't cool to scratch letters
30:22
Speaker 1: into the the beak of the swans, because you know,
30:25
Speaker 1: I think those are sort of bony. But I bet
30:27
Speaker 1: it wasn't a pleasant experience, right, No, No, I don't
30:30
Speaker 1: think the swans themselves would have voted for it, had
30:34
Speaker 1: they had the swan vote, But you're right. The decline
30:37
Speaker 1: of this practice was also pretty slow. In this might
30:41
Speaker 1: surprise some people to know that animal rights activists in
30:44
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds were the driving force behind the
30:49
Speaker 1: end of the swan markings. They said it constituted unnecessary suffering,
30:55
Speaker 1: and so eventually Queen Alexandra was married to King Edward
30:59
Speaker 1: the Seven and stopped the royal birds at least from
31:02
Speaker 1: being marked. But it was not until nineteen that the
31:09
Speaker 1: law was changed such that it was no longer an
31:12
Speaker 1: active treason to eat a swan in the UK, unless
31:16
Speaker 1: you know you had your paperwork and your swan mark
31:17
Speaker 1: and so on. As a native species, mute swans are
31:22
Speaker 1: still under legal protection, though it's not just the Queens
31:25
Speaker 1: give me all them impulse anymore. Though now swans are
31:29
Speaker 1: protected as wild birds under the Wildlife and Countryside Act
31:33
Speaker 1: of one, which means and even now in it is
31:39
Speaker 1: illegal to kill or keep swans, you can still technically
31:46
Speaker 1: be guilty of swantage. Oh how far we've come. Oh,
31:51
Speaker 1: and this is the weirdest part. No, maybe you can
31:54
Speaker 1: help me with this. Who still owns all the swans?
31:58
Speaker 1: I think the Queens still owns every unmarked mute swan.
32:04
Speaker 1: And that's exactly right. And here's the thing, though, there
32:08
Speaker 1: is and this is a tradition, and this is something
32:11
Speaker 1: that like, you know, the Brits are all about tradition.
32:13
Speaker 1: I think it was off Mike. We were talking about
32:14
Speaker 1: like things like funny hats that happened for very specific
32:18
Speaker 1: purposes or to to indicate different levels of education or
32:22
Speaker 1: progression through you know, a military unit or whatever. That
32:25
Speaker 1: then just kind of stick around, you know, and they
32:28
Speaker 1: stop being a functional thing and they more become like
32:31
Speaker 1: about pageantry or more. Is like revering the legacy of
32:34
Speaker 1: a thing that maybe meant something specific a long time ago,
32:37
Speaker 1: but now has no real place in modern society. But
32:39
Speaker 1: you stick around and you keep wearing those funny hats
32:42
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh. There's a thing that still is going
32:45
Speaker 1: on today called swan upping, uh that that involves funny hats,
32:50
Speaker 1: which I enjoy. There's sort of like, uh almost look
32:52
Speaker 1: like like a like a paper sailboat you might drop
32:55
Speaker 1: in the Thames, but but in hat form um. So
32:58
Speaker 1: this is something that's been happening for a nine years. Um.
33:01
Speaker 1: We we may be alluded to it a little bit
33:03
Speaker 1: earlier about the idea of the swan masters who would
33:06
Speaker 1: check the marks and uh, you know kind of do
33:08
Speaker 1: account and make sure that you know, they claimed all
33:11
Speaker 1: of the unmarked swans. Um. That is called swan upping.
33:16
Speaker 1: And so they roll out now as part of this
33:18
Speaker 1: like carrying on this tradition. Um. They've been doing this
33:21
Speaker 1: for nine years. These men row up and down the
33:24
Speaker 1: Thames looking to mark, check and count the swans. And
33:28
Speaker 1: actually you can see a great video of it on
33:29
Speaker 1: YouTube you type in swan uping. Uh. They weigh them.
33:34
Speaker 1: They actually lift them out by hand of the water
33:36
Speaker 1: and weigh them on a scale. Um and and and
33:39
Speaker 1: you know, keep a ledger of like all of the
33:41
Speaker 1: swans in the Thames. Um. And in some you know,
33:46
Speaker 1: sad yet unsurprising news, this year's swan upping ceremony will
33:50
Speaker 1: not be taking place. Uh. It dates back to the
33:53
Speaker 1: twelfth century. And I believe this maybe the first swan
33:57
Speaker 1: upping ceremony that's been cant old because of the pandemic. Yeah,
34:03
Speaker 1: because of the pandemic. Right, I'm not aware whether or
34:06
Speaker 1: not it was canceled at some point during World War
34:09
Speaker 1: two or other times of great turmoil. Nowadays, it still
34:13
Speaker 1: exists because that tradition is very useful. It's a conservation tool.
34:17
Speaker 1: It's a predecessor of the operations that conservationists take around
34:22
Speaker 1: the world, you know, tagging and monitoring populations of wild animals.
34:28
Speaker 1: Technically now all on marked swans on open water belong
34:34
Speaker 1: to the Queen, but the Queen only exercises this ownership
34:39
Speaker 1: right on this one stretch of the Thims. And when
34:44
Speaker 1: killing swans was outlawed in the nineteen eighties, the population
34:48
Speaker 1: of England was shrinking, and a lot of people nowadays
34:51
Speaker 1: believe that the Queen is the only person allowed to
34:54
Speaker 1: eat mute swans. Here's a bit of weird British plot
34:58
Speaker 1: twist or ree for you. That's not exactly correct, but
35:03
Speaker 1: it is maybe correct in practice, because remember, the Queen
35:07
Speaker 1: of England is considered immune from prosecution. So she woke
35:12
Speaker 1: up one day and said, I just want to eat
35:14
Speaker 1: swans forever legally no one could really stop her. It's uh,
35:19
Speaker 1: it's it's good to be at the top, I guess,
35:21
Speaker 1: And hey, you might be asking yourself, I don't live
35:24
Speaker 1: in the UK, I really want to eat a swan?
35:27
Speaker 1: How do I? How do I? How do I go
35:29
Speaker 1: about this? Um? It is a thing. It's sort of
35:33
Speaker 1: like an exotic meats, like pigeon or emu, or like
35:38
Speaker 1: Ostrich And you see these here and there certain types
35:42
Speaker 1: of restaurants that would specialize in kind of more game
35:45
Speaker 1: type meets, but you still aren't gonna see swan on
35:49
Speaker 1: the menu. And there's a reason for that. It is
35:52
Speaker 1: technically in the United States legal to hunt and kill
35:56
Speaker 1: swans if you have the appropriate permit. I don't know
35:59
Speaker 1: how that would go. Where there Where are their wild
36:01
Speaker 1: swans in the US? I'm not sure, but nobody really
36:05
Speaker 1: does it, and nobody well, if they do, they might
36:08
Speaker 1: do it for uh trophy purposes right for But even
36:12
Speaker 1: that already? Can you sense where I'm going with this
36:15
Speaker 1: kind of weirds people out? It was sort of be
36:17
Speaker 1: the equivalent of like hunting puppies, you know. And I
36:20
Speaker 1: don't know why, considering what we've said about the nightmare
36:23
Speaker 1: fuel that is swan, I feel like they should all
36:26
Speaker 1: be hunted down and eliminated personally. Um, that's a hot take.
36:30
Speaker 1: That's a hot take. I'm only half serious, um, three
36:34
Speaker 1: quarters serious. But um, it's because of something called the
36:38
Speaker 1: meat paradox um. And there's actually a really cool article
36:43
Speaker 1: on the outline that talks about why don't we eat swans?
36:48
Speaker 1: Knowing that we eat things like turkey and goose and
36:51
Speaker 1: even rabbit. We talked about this actually with Casey on
36:53
Speaker 1: a previous episode about where do we draw the line? Um,
36:57
Speaker 1: And this is a thing, it's called the meat paradox,
37:00
Speaker 1: And this is the mind's way of kind of coping
37:04
Speaker 1: with this disfluency over like, you know, what animals are
37:08
Speaker 1: okay to eat? What animals do we associate more es
37:11
Speaker 1: sentience and intelligence with. And it's also kind of it
37:14
Speaker 1: doesn't always work out because, as we talked about with Casey,
37:16
Speaker 1: pigs are very intelligent, but yet we have no problem
37:20
Speaker 1: with eating them. They're also kind of cute, even though
37:21
Speaker 1: they roll around in their own filth. People would uh,
37:24
Speaker 1: people would eat anything though. I mean, that's why starvation
37:27
Speaker 1: cannibalism exists exactly. But for some reason, swans fit squarely
37:33
Speaker 1: within that no no zone of the meat paradox. Go figure, Yeah,
37:38
Speaker 1: this is interesting. So you can catch uh, you can
37:42
Speaker 1: catch us swans? Can you can buy swans in the
37:45
Speaker 1: US Many people do, but it's more of an ornamental thing.
37:49
Speaker 1: You can go to any number of institutions and they'll
37:53
Speaker 1: just have swans hanging out. They fell out of favor
37:56
Speaker 1: as food, uh, partially there's sort of a positive feedback loop.
38:01
Speaker 1: Part of the reason they fell out of favor as
38:02
Speaker 1: food is because if you are manufacturing swans for consumption,
38:07
Speaker 1: you have to compete with the huge economic scale of
38:11
Speaker 1: other mainstream meat manufacturers and other well we would call
38:16
Speaker 1: them exotic meat manufacturers, you know, squab, quail, pigeon, etcetera.
38:22
Speaker 1: And I'm having a little bit of a hard time
38:23
Speaker 1: finding if this is entirely true, because there's some folks
38:27
Speaker 1: saying that it's sort of a myth. But there is
38:29
Speaker 1: this notion that swans mate for life. Um, and that's
38:34
Speaker 1: another reason that I think folks are differentiating them from
38:37
Speaker 1: other creatures, because there's this notion. There's even a quote
38:40
Speaker 1: in that article that we were talking about. Uh, the
38:43
Speaker 1: image of a lonely swan searching fruitlessly for its butchered
38:46
Speaker 1: partner would surely make even the most obnoxious bacon is
38:50
Speaker 1: my personality meat bro think twice. So we can say that,
38:56
Speaker 1: uh presentation aside, it's probably not going to change your
39:00
Speaker 1: life to eat a swan. You don't. You don't have
39:03
Speaker 1: to uh to enjoy them. You can just see these
39:06
Speaker 1: lovely creatures lovely from far away. The same way that
39:09
Speaker 1: maybe a bonfire looks lovely far away, you can enjoy
39:13
Speaker 1: it from a distance, but we don't recommend hanging out
39:16
Speaker 1: with them in person. If you are the caretaker of
39:21
Speaker 1: some swans, we'd love to hear from you. Have you
39:24
Speaker 1: ever eaten swan? Have you have you tried it? How
39:27
Speaker 1: would you cook it? I found a great recipe, a
39:29
Speaker 1: couple of great recipes, but I myself have not made swan.
39:33
Speaker 1: You can find us on the internet in places. Um,
39:37
Speaker 1: we've got Instagram and and you know, Facebook and all that.
39:41
Speaker 1: For ridiculous history. Our recommendation, as you know, is typically
39:44
Speaker 1: to join the Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, where you can
39:48
Speaker 1: share memes about swans and they're horrible hell scape of
39:53
Speaker 1: a mouth and tongue situation. There's definitely some of those
39:56
Speaker 1: out there. Uh. If you want to trigger me with
39:58
Speaker 1: other bird pictures and stories or p bend with pictures
40:01
Speaker 1: of metal, you can do that there too, And we do.
40:03
Speaker 1: We do kind of creep through the group from agree
40:06
Speaker 1: to this. Well, Uh, okay, you know do what that will,
40:11
Speaker 1: is what I say. Um, and let the chips fall
40:13
Speaker 1: where they may. Yeah, you can find that on Facebook.
40:16
Speaker 1: You can also find us as individual human people. I'm
40:19
Speaker 1: pretty much only on Instagram and I am at how
40:22
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown. There. You can see me encountering very
40:26
Speaker 1: strange foods actually on my Instagram at Ben Bolland. You
40:29
Speaker 1: can also find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bolland.
40:33
Speaker 1: H s W. Thanks again to our fantastic guest super
40:38
Speaker 1: producer Andrew A how a k A Cool GUYE Deluxe
40:43
Speaker 1: Howard a k a uh Swan Master a k A.
40:47
Speaker 1: Mr magic Our. Thanks so much for joining us today. Andrew,
40:50
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Great to be here. I hope
40:53
Speaker 1: you mean it because I think you're recording another episode
40:55
Speaker 1: with us, So thanks as well as always to Alex Willams,
41:00
Speaker 1: who composed this slapping Bob you here at the beginning
41:03
Speaker 1: and end of every episode thanks to the quister. Hey,
41:07
Speaker 1: and speaking of the slapping Bob, or as I like
41:09
Speaker 1: to refer to it as the Bop and slap Um,
41:13
Speaker 1: you have any Ben Trepid remixers out there, sample that business,
41:16
Speaker 1: send it back to us. Alex would be tickled, you know,
41:19
Speaker 1: do do a remix of the ridiculous history theme. That
41:21
Speaker 1: would be a lot of fun. Homework assignment to any
41:24
Speaker 1: musicians or home bedroom recording artists out there. Um, you know,
41:29
Speaker 1: you know not not not not not mandatory, but it'd
41:31
Speaker 1: be fun to hear. Um. Yeah, Jonathan Strickland, that devious,
41:34
Speaker 1: notorious quister who I believe will be zoom bombing us
41:36
Speaker 1: again very soon. Um. Thanks to the Gabe Louisier um
41:40
Speaker 1: who is our intrepid research associate. Um. And thanks to
41:47
Speaker 1: christophrostiotis here in spirit. Shout out to Swan Songs and
41:51
Speaker 1: of course, as I always like to say in these episodes,
41:54
Speaker 1: who are number one fan the Queen of England. Thanks
41:57
Speaker 1: for tuning in. We'll see you next time, folks. M
42:08
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
42:10
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
42:13
Speaker 1: your favorite shows