{"id":4243,"date":"2010-07-26T22:24:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T02:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4243"},"modified":"2010-07-26T22:24:09","modified_gmt":"2010-07-27T02:24:09","slug":"swan-upping-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4243","title":{"rendered":"Swan-upping, anyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/4824904712\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4143\/4824904712_ec695daccd.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today was pretty uneventful, even for a Monday.<\/p>\n<p>My Forgotten English calendar informs me that it&#8217;s the Traditional Swan-Upping Day, when<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;since the Middle Ages, the Worshipful Company of Dyers and that of Vintners have annually rounded up and marked mute cygnets&#8217; bills upriver from London &#8212; a bit like old-fashioned American cattle-branding. Using sharp knives, the companies&#8217; swan-wardens once indicated ownership with one or two nicks respectively to distinguish their own from unmarked, royal birds. But now the birds&#8217; legs are banded instead. At one time, swan ownership in Norfolk and Suffolk was indicated by a wide range of nicks, as seen in a 500-year-old scroll depicting ninety-nine distinctive marks. A remnant of this practice can be seen in the pub name, <i>The Swan with Two Necks<\/i> &#8212; a corruption of <i>The Swan with Two Nicks<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Around here? Not so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today was pretty uneventful, even for a Monday. My Forgotten English calendar informs me that it&#8217;s the Traditional Swan-Upping Day, when &#8230;since the Middle Ages, the Worshipful Company of Dyers and that of Vintners have annually rounded up and marked mute cygnets&#8217; bills upriver from London &#8212; a bit like old-fashioned American cattle-branding. Using sharp &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4243\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[110,92,28],"class_list":["post-4243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-animals","tag-history","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}