As I wend my slightly crumpled way through the world, there is one question I am asked more often than any other. Readers of my Hooting Yard website will buttonhole me at bus stops or as I trudge around Nameless Pond, and say, usually in importunate tones, “Frank, why is it that you are so obsessed with the fact that a few years ago Peter Maxwell Davies found an electrocuted whooper swan, took it home, cooked it and ate it?”
Over at Hooting Yard I have referred more than once to the swan-eating habits of the composer, who is also the Master of the Queen’s Music. And here I am beetling away at the topic again. Why does it exert such a fascination upon me?
Oh, I could tell some long and involved story about my invented ornithological past, but I am not going to. I will simply say this. Max, as he is known to his chums, was interviewed by the police when they saw a dead swan hanging outside his Orcadian retreat. They were concerned because all swans are under the protection of the Queen. (I assume this means all English swans, as opposed to every single swan throughout the world, but I am prepared to be corrected on this detail.) Anyway, I was wondering if a meeting had to be called where the Master of the Queen’s Music, still digesting that whooper swan, was hauled before the Keeper of the Queen’s Swans to explain just what he thought he was doing, stealing a Cygnus cygnus from the monarch. No doubt the police would also have told the Keeper that Max had another pair of swan’s wings hanging up in his shed, which he intended to present to the local infant school to act as angel’s wings in its Nativity Play
It was then I learned that the post of Keeper of the Queen’s Swans – the only job I ever really wanted – had been abolished in 1993. I assumed that the position had been replaced by zonk-eyed bean-counting management consultants under a public-private partnership initiative, whose first decision would have been to give it a trendy new name like Swansignia. But what actually happened was that the post was replaced by two brand new offices, the Warden of the Queen’s Swans and the Marker of the Queen’s Swans. This made me so happy that I burst into tears. Now all I need to do is wait for one of the post-holders to resign or die. Wish me luck.
One point regarding Max and his swan terrine – the swan he turned into paté was a Whooper swan as you mention – the queen only has rights over Mute swans, not the non-native Whooper or Berwick, thus clearing the besmirched Max’s name of any wrongdoing. Incidentally the queen also exerts rights over ‘fish’ too- sturgeons, whales dolphins and porpoises, according to wikipedia, due to their ‘superior excellence’ – and in scotland the monarch’s property rights include those whales too large to be pulled to land by a “wain pulled by six oxen”.
The Marker sounds like the plum, doesn’t it? Do you get an official felt tip pen, I wonder?
It sounds a bit scary but I think the marker actually uses a sharp implement to gouge indentification patterns into the swans beak!
Of course if the swans weren’t mute, I’m sure they’d ask for an anchor or a skull and crossbones or something
You seem to know a suspicious amount about this royal swan business, Worm…
..saw a documentary on swan upping on BBC4 one evening
On the “world” hypothesis, could you ask the Queen to retrieve the mute swans from the Chesapeake Bay? They are a nuisance, and the state of Maryland spends time and money trying to get rid of them.
Expat Dabbler Rita Byrne Tull is in Maryland – perhaps she could act as a royal go-between to deal with the pesky swans?
I’d like to know the rationale behind the 100% increase in the number of royal swan management roles. Bureaucracy gone mad or a sign of healthy growth in the royal swan population?
Correction….Pete is known amongst his ‘friends’ as Maximum Max or old big ‘ed, not to be confused with the Bermondsey variety.
Maximum or Maximus as those amongst us with an education would intone, famous for his dexterity with the semi quaver and stuff notably the Donald Where’s Yer Troosers suite, opus 22. First given a public airing at the Usher Hall’s 1994 Edinburgh Festival opening nite, sandwiched between the Mackerras Zauberflote and that new stuff by P Boulez, the frog from France.
Boulez, whose conducting arm was suffering from a flux and consequently was ‘sitting this one out’ in the front row, grand circle was overheard after the performance remarking “crivvens”
The Maxwell Davies not to be confused with the Maxwell Scott’s, Wally Scott’s descendent’s. Wally famous for his novels, went down big style on the continent notably with that Bergamo Itie Donizetti who wrote a couple of tunes, well, opera really based on Wally’s book, Lucy of the Lammermoor’s, Rossini, upon hearing the opera was heard to remark “what the f….’s that all about.”
This led to the rumour that it was one of Donizetti’s descendent’s who dug up poor old Rossini from his comfortable berth in that Paris cemetery, looking forward to the day when he would be joined by Jim Morrison, and transported to that weird, cold Santa Croce, chock full of Japanese bleedin’ tourists.
Wally, never could spell, the Lammermoors are correctly named the Lammermuirs, that’s the hill on the A68 covered in wind generating stuff and where that bastard copper with the mobile radar van parks nearly every day, booking Krauts, Ities and misc Malty’s who, of course never, ever pay the fine.
The point of this comment? Dabblers heading for Edinburgh on the A68 may be interested in a set of Köln (K) plates, going cheap.