The Great Mallard Chase (or, another example of Oxford eccentricity)

THE GREAT MALLARD CHASE

A mallard

On the night of January 14, 2001, some of Oxford's most learned fellows could be seen marching around All Souls College behind a wooden duck held aloft on a pole. They were engaged in the bizarre ritual of "hunting the mallard" that occurs once every 100 years at the College. I was up at Oxford at the time, and one of my tutors was present and so I got the eye-witness account of the matter.

After a commemorative feast the fellows paraded around the College with flaming torches, singing the Mallard Song and led by “Lord Mallard” carried in a sedan chair. They were in search of a legendary mallard that supposedly flew out of the foundations of the college when it was being built. 

And so, during the hunt the Lord Mallard is preceded by a man bearing a pole to which a mallard is tied. Originally it was a live bird, by 1901 it had become a dead bird, and by 2001 it was a bird carved from wood. The last mallard ceremony was in 2001 and the next will be held in 2101. 

All Souls College, Oxford

In 1632 the archbishop of Canterbury chastised the fellows for drunken rioting at the feast.

The ceremony supposedly dates back to 1437, when the foundations of The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed of Oxford (now known as All Souls College) were being dug. 

The college’s founder, Henry Clichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, was trying to decide where to put his new building and in a dream he was told that if he built it in the High Street, next to the church, when he dug the foundations he would find: “…a schwoppinge mallarde imprisoned in the sinke or sewere, wele yfattened and almost ybosten. Sure token of the thrivaunce of his future college.”

He dug where directed and heard: “horrid strugglinges and flutteringes”. He said a few prayers, reached into the hole and pulled out a duck the size of: “a bustarde or an ostridge.” The bird flew away and the Fellows of All Souls chased it around the college. They caught it and ate it.

A document detailing the event appeared in 1750, and was supposedly based on an original fifteenth century manuscript. 

The mallard is the symbol for All Souls, and the Mallard Song (reproduced at the end of this piece) is the College song. Which is all very cute until you realise that All Souls is the most dignified of all the Oxford Colleges, as it only admits fellows. There are no rowdy, noisy undergraduates such as one would expect to bellow out the Mallard Song and engage in high jinks.

All Souls loves its Mallard and the bird appears all over the College: there is a model of the duck in most common rooms, the ornate 19th century chairs in the Hall are carved with the college crest and a Mallard, there is a Mallard-shaped telephone near the Library, and there is a splendid and very accurately painted plaster Mallard drake on the wall of Hawksmoor’s college Buttery, which came from a Gothic pavilion built in the garden in 1753.

My tutor gave us the insider's view of the Great Mallard Chase of 2001. She and the other Fellows partook of a 14 course dinner in the medieval Codrington Library, accompanied by superb wines (All Souls has the best cellar in the country - better than Buckingham Palace). I have reprinted the menu from 1901 below. Dr Martin Litchfield West as the Lord Mallard, and the Fellows sang, much as they have done for hundreds of years, the Mallard Song. The Victorians disapproved of the reference in the song to the Mallard’s “swapping tool of Generation”, mightier than any other in “ye winged Nation” (of birds) and dropped this verse from the song. It was restored in the 2001 ceremony, when the Fellows sat down to the Mallard Centennial Dinner, which did include a duck.

Dr West with the plaster duck

When everyone was in an excess of good spirits, four of the younger fellows hoisted the Lord Mallard up in his special sedan chair (the same one used in 1901 - but we're not sure if it was also used in 1801) and they chased a wooden mallard duck around the quad. In the days before Animal Rights (a very serious consideration in Oxford, given letter bombs to scientists and sabotage of laboratories), they chased a real duck. But this century, for the first time, a fake duck had to do. So, with the Lord Mallard hoisted high in his sedan chair the whole congregation of fellows chased this wood duck around the quadrangle bellowing out the Mallard Song. 

Now, given that he was not expending any energy and was the centre of attention, the Lord Mallard was anxious to repeat the experience. "Again, again" he cried, and he was carried around the quadrangle again, and then for a third time at his excited urging. But, when he said "Again", wanting a fourth perambulation, the poor sedan carriers rebelled and dumped him on the ground. Then there were wonderful fireworks, including fireworks in the shape of a mallard. 

What should be remembered is that All Souls College has no undergraduates and its fellows are considered to be among the finest minds in the world. Lord Mallard in 2001, who lead the midnight procession, carried high on a sedan chair, was Dr Martin West, one of the greatest classicists of his generation. 

This gorgeous 19C oak bench is found in All Souls Hall.

The Mallard Song (reproduced from the All Souls website: http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/ )

This is the text as reconstructed from the older copies:

The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon
Lett other hungry Mortalls gape on
And on theire bones with Stomacks fall hard,
But lett Allsouls' Men have ye Mallard.
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
Of Cocks & Bulls, & other queire things
That happen'd in ye Reignes of theire Kings.
Hough the bloud, &c.

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.
Ho the bloud, &c.

The Poets fain'd Jove turn'd a Swan,
But lett them prove it if they can.
To mak't appeare it's not attall hard:
Hee was a swapping, swapping mallard.
Ho the bloud, &c.

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.
Ho the bloud, &c.

Then lett us drink and dance a Galliard
in ye Remembrance of ye Mallard,
And as ye Mallard doth in Poole,
Lett's dabble, dive & duck in Boule.
Ho the bloud, &c.

The second verse, which refers to English chroniclers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was discarded in 1752, and the fifth was expunged on grounds of decency in 1821. The original verses were restored for the new millennium. No one knows which King Edward is referred to, or why.

The 1901 Menu for the Dinner

Potâge des Tourterelles du Siècle Nouveau. Tourbot, Sauce du Warden. Éperlans à la Custodes Jocalium. Vol-au-Vent du Ris de Veau à la Sub-warden. Filets de Boeuf de L'Estates Bursar. Châpons Rotis à la Roi Edouard. Jambon d'Yorck. Selle du Mouton. Mallard Swapping Sauce. Pouding d'All Souls Gâteau de Chichele. Sardines de Chichele Merluches Salade des Junior Fellows Dessert du Common Room.

Welcoming the May in Oxford - Katherine Langrish

So on the First of May we got up in the grey twilight at 4.45am and drove into Oxford to listen to the choirboys singing the May in from the top of Magdalen Tower.

The sky was crimson, every moment changing and brightening towards amber and gold. We found a parking place somewhere near the station and hurried up through the town, which was strangely awake for such a time in the morning. Scattered pedestrians striding purposefully. Cyclists creaking by on ancient bicycles. Groups of worse-for-wear students who’d been up all night, noisy, laughing, hugging one another, stumbling along. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young… All of us heading the same way and for the same reason.  Kebab and burger vans on Queen Street were doing a great trade. The air was chill, the buildings still shadowed. Towery city and branchy between towers, cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded… On the High, a homeless man sat in a college doorway and watched the crowd passing downhill towards Magdalen College and its bell tower.

No one is quite sure, it seems, how old this ceremony is, but it’s been going on for many hundreds of years. Every year at 6am on May Day, the choir of Magdalen College climbs to the top of Magdalen Tower to sing from the roof to celebrate the spring – first the Hymnus Eucharisticus and then English country songs and madrigals. 

As the crowd around the base of the tower became thicker, we came to a halt among a happy bunch of May morning sightseers – many in May costumes, crowned with real flowers and greenery. Tipping our heads back, we could just see the white robes of the choir moving between the finials of the tower top, and imagine the scene up there as Holman Hunt depicted it in his painting ‘May Morning on Magdalen Tower’ (1888-90).

This must be the most popular of Oxford’s colourful college traditions. Some are stranger than others. All Souls (full name: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed) for example, owns to a custom as weird as anything out of Gormenghast: the Hunting of the Mallard. Once a century, the respectable Fellows of this wealthiest of colleges partake of a feast followed by a crazy ritual in which, led by a ‘Lord Mallard’ carried in a chair, they parade through the college with flaming torches in pursuit of a man carrying a wooden duck tied to a pole. This is to commemorate a huge mallard which, startled by workmen digging a drain, supposedly flew out of the foundations when the college was being built in 1437.  Whilst parading, the participants sing the Mallard Song, which dates from about 1660.

The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon

Let other hungry Mortalls gape on

And on their bones with Stomacks fall hard,

But let All Souls’ Men have the Mallard.

Chorus:

Hough the bloud of King Edward.

By the bloud of King Edward

It was a swapping, swapping mallard!

I have sometimes wondered, if Mervyn Peake knew of this ceremony, whether it inspired any of Gormenghast’s strange rituals, such as the ceremony to Honour the Poet.  Barquentine,  Master of Rituals, outlines the requirements to Steerpike. Have the cloisters been painted the correct shade of darkest red? Has the Poet completed his poem? Has he been told about the magpie?

‘I told him that he must rise to his feet and declaim within twelve seconds of the magpie’s release from the wire cage. That while declaiming his left hand must be clasping the beaker of moat-water in which the Countess has previously placed the blue pebble from Gormenghast river.’

            ‘That is so, boy.  And that he shall be wearing the Poet’s Gown, that his feet shall be bare, did you tell him that?’

            ‘I did,’ said Steerpike.

            ‘And the yellow benches for the Professors, were they found?’

All Souls’ Mallard ceremony was last held in 2001 and so will not be held again until 2101, but the song (which has six verses) is apparently still sung twice a year. I don’t know if the Fellows have re-included the fifth verse which was ‘expunged on grounds of decency’ in 1821 – but most 21^st century sensibilities will find it enjoyably ridiculous rather than obscene. Anyhow, no one prepared to canter through college after a duck on a pole has any right to complain.

Hee was swapping all from bill to eye,

Hee was swapping all from wing to thigh,

His swapping tool of generation

Oute swapped all the winged Nation.

Chorus:

Hough the bloud of King Edward.

By the bloud of King Edward

It was a swapping, swapping mallard!

Hunting the Mallard is a ceremony exclusively for the lofty Fellows of All Souls College, but the Magdalen College ceremony is for everyone, town and gown. As we watched, the corner of the tower slowly glowed in the sunrise. The clock chimed six. The crowd, five thousand strong by now, hushed. The chimes faded and the choir at the tower top began to sing. Their voices were amplified – and for a moment, braced as I’d been to listen for the high, clear, distant notes, I was disappointed. Then I realised that it was the only practical solution, given the numbers waiting below. And it was still lovely.  

After the Latin hymn, a prayer was read thanking God for the light of morning, remembering St Mary Magdalene and the women who were witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus at the break of day, and praising God’s creation Mother Earth with all her spring flowers. As a happy combination of Christianity and nature worship, it seemed faultlessly medieval. Then the choir sang Thomas Morley's songs ‘Now is the Month of Maying’ and 'My Bonnie Lass She Smileth' – and it was over, the sun was up, and it was time to wander back through the city with the rest of the teeming multitude and find somewhere to eat breakfast. Our attention was caught by someone waving aloft a hand-written placard declaring the existence of  ‘Free Bacon Sandwiches at the Wesley Memorial Church on New Inn Hall Street’ – but that seemed too far away from the action. 

 

The thump of a big drum lured us into Radcliffe Square where we found a colourful band playing oddly dirge-like marches on the cobbles around the Radcliffe camera. Then we looped back to the High for an expensive but delicious breakfast of scrambled egg and smoked salmon, bacon rolls and coffee. And one Bucks Fizz, which we shared between us. It was still only 7am.  

Merry May!