THE VINTNERS’ SWANS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 24 March 1928, Page 11

THE VINTNERS’ SWANS

YJS^HEN. the Prince of Wales dined with the Vintners’ On., musicians playing “All in a Garden Green” led in a procession of watermen and cooks, which brought four roast cygnets to table. For the Vintners have been patrons of swans from time immemorial and they eat a swan dinner every year. The swan is, of course, a bird very highly connected. Before the days of the Vintners it’ moved in the best circles with Lohengrin and Jupiter. In England the Crown has been very particular about sfrans (says the London “Daily Telegraph”). Only a substantial freeholder was allowed to keep any. Stealing a swan’s egg was punished with a year’s imprisonment; stealing a swan itself, setting snares for it, or driving it, whether a white swan or a grey, was even more severely provided lor. The thing went so far that no one could appoint a new swanherd for birds on Thames water without license of the King’s swanlierd, and that official kept a firm hand on flic varicts. When lie called for tliem they came, or were fined; they mast not mark a bird unless lie’saw them do it; lie had record of all marks, and plowed no new ones except by special favour and license. The reason for all ibis fuss is not to bo found in the divine, romantic or poetical'reputation of the swan. He was a royal bird not because of his beauty or his prowess, or even his rarity, but because he was thought uncommon good to eat. If we value birds by their prices, a cygnet vas much better liked than ducks, wild or domestic, but not as well as a goose. The Vintners have to do with swans ns dwelling from of old on Thames

ANCIENT CUSTOMS

bank, where their hall is to-day. “Bordeaux merchants” were shipping Gascon wine to London 70J or 800 years ago, and “craned the barrels out of lighters and landed them” in the riparian region which came to be called the Vintry. Chaucer’s father traded as a vintner in Upper Thames street. They were an opulent guild five centuries since. A vintner, Henry Picard, in his year as Mayor of London, had five Kings to dinner, Edward 111, and the sovereigns of Scotland. France (but lie was a prisoner), Denmark, and Cyprus. Whether he gave them swans, iiistory does not record, but after dinner be threw die-© with them and won, and bis Majesty of Cyprus did not like it at all. The magniricent vintner gave him all his money back: “My Lord and King, be not aggrieved. I court not your gold, but your play, tor 1 have not bidden you hither that you might grieve.” A guild, the members of w filch could do tilings in this style, deserved its share of the royal birds. Every year for three centuries at least- the. “swan uppers” of the Vintners’ Company have, been marking the bills of the cygnets on the Thames,, which they share with the Dyers’ Company a nd the Crown . Two nicks, one on each side of the mandible, is the mark of the Vintners, whence, as men say, comes the tavern sign, “Swan With Two Necks.” Some have guessed that the nicks represent the chevron which, with three tuns, makes the \ intliens’ arms. Or they may stand for a V. An ancient toast of the guild is. ‘ ’The Worshipful Company of Vintners with Five.” Such was the. witty ingenuity of our ancestors.