The swan is one of England’s oldest pub symbols – a bird of beauty, royalty, and a genuinely strange ancient law
The Old Swan holds nineteen hundred and sixty-seven reviews and a 4.4 – a large, solid sample – and it is named after one of the oldest and most elegant of all pub symbols: the swan, the beautiful white bird of the river, wrapped in royalty, myth, and one genuinely bizarre ancient law.
The bird on the sign
The swan is among the most ancient and widespread of English pub names, appearing on signs for many centuries. It is easy to see why: the swan is strikingly beautiful, instantly recognisable, pure white, graceful on the water – a wonderful image to paint on a sign, memorable and dignified. “The Swan,” “The White Swan,” “The Old Swan,” “The Swan with Two Necks” – the bird appears in many forms across the country.
The swan carries rich associations: beauty, grace, purity, fidelity (swans famously pair for life), and a certain serene dignity. It appears in heraldry, in myth, and in the old imagery of the river and the waterside. For a riverside or waterside pub especially, the swan was a natural and lovely choice.
The Queen’s swans
Here is the genuinely strange fact about swans in England: by ancient law, the Crown owns them. Mute swans on open water have, since medieval times, been considered royal birds, the property of the monarch. This royal ownership of swans dates back to when swans were a prized food for royal and noble feasts – a swan on the table was a mark of the highest status – and the Crown asserted ownership to control this valuable resource.
Astonishingly, this royal claim to swans survives, in modified form, to this day. The reigning monarch still holds the right to ownership of unmarked mute swans in open water, and retains the title of “Seigneur of the Swans.” It is one of the strangest surviving royal prerogatives – the monarch, in principle, owns the swans.
Swan Upping
And the ownership is still, remarkably, exercised through a genuine annual ceremony: Swan Upping. Each year, on the River Thames, the Sovereign’s Swan Marker, together with the ancient City livery companies of the Vintners and the Dyers (who were historically granted rights to own swans), travels up the river in traditional skiffs, catching, counting, checking the health of, and marking the swans and their cygnets. It is a genuine ceremony of conservation and census, dating back centuries, conducted in traditional scarlet uniforms, and it still happens every July. The swan on the pub sign is a bird literally counted, each year, in the monarch’s name.
The swan in myth
The swan is rich in myth too – the “swan song,” the beautiful final song a swan was fabled to sing just before death, giving us our phrase for a final performance; the Greek myth of Zeus transforming into a swan; the swan maidens of folklore; the beauty of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” The swan has always carried an air of the magical, the transformative, and the beautiful, which suits a pub sign perfectly.
The pub
A solid, popular pub doing a fair 4.4 across a large and real sample, named after the swan – the beautiful, royal, legally-protected, myth-laden bird of the English river.
Verdict
Solid, popular, and named after the swan – bird of beauty and myth, owned by the Crown, and still counted each year on the Thames in the monarch’s name.
Have a pint under the old swan, and remember that the graceful white bird it depicts is, by ancient law, the property of the King – and gets counted every July.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
I’ve been to half these places and the other half are fictional but believable which is the entire point