Author: Sarah Laskow / Source: Atlas Obscura
In honor of the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, this week we’re telling the stories of some of the United Kingdom’s oldest and oddest traditions.
Swans, according to those who have eaten them, are tasty birds. The meat is “more like duck than it is like goose,” one hunter reports; it’s “lean, lightly gamey, moist, and succulent,” in the words of a chef.
Today, it’s rare for swan to be served, but for hundreds of years in England, eating swan was a mark of status. No one could own or eat one without paying the monarchy for the privilege, and an elaborate system of marks developed to track swan rights. By default, though, the king or queen owned the country’s swans, and that’s still true: Any unmarked swans swimming in the open waters of England belong to the Queen.
Rules governing swan ownership in England date back before the mid-13th century, as Arthur MacGregor of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum explains in a 1995 issue of Anthropozoologica. By 1361, the crown had an official Royal Swan-herd, and by 1463 there was a “Swan-mote” with commissioners appointed to hear swan disputes.
Swans were considered royal fowl, but by the beginning of 15th century, wealthy people could buy the right to own, sell, and eat them. If…
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