It is in a letter of Archbishop Abbott’s, dealing with one of the riotous feasts to which the College had grown addicted, that we have our first mention of that celebrated bird, the All Souls Mallard. The Visitor writes--“The feast of Christmas drawing now to an end, doth put me in mind of the great outrage which, as I am informed, was the last year committed in your College, where although matters had formerly been conducted with some distemper, yet men did never before break forth into such intolerable liberty as to tear down doors and gates, and disquiet their neighbours as if it had been a camp or a town in war. Civil men should never so far forget themselves under pretence of a foolish mallard, as to do things barbarously unbecoming.” Evidently the gaudé had developed into one of those outbreaks, which a modern Oxford College knows well enough when its boat has gone head of the river. Furniture had been smashed, perhaps a bonfire lighted; certainly the noise had been long and loud. But what of the Mallard? Pamphlets have been written on him, and College tradition tells that when the first stone of the College was laid a mallard was started out of a drain on the spot. In commemoration of the event, the Fellows annually went round the College after the gaudé, pretending to search for the tutelary bird. The song concerning him was written to be sung by “Lord Mallard,” a Fellow chosen as the official songster of the College. It bears every appearance of being of Jacobean date-- “Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon, Let other hungry mortals gape on, And on their bones with stomachs fall hard, But let All Souls’ men have their Mallard. _Chorus_-- O by the blood of King Edward, It was a swapping, swapping Mallard! “The Romans once admired a gander More than they did their chief Commander, Because he saved, if some don’t fool us, The place that’s named from the scull of Tolus.[194] _Chorus, etc._ “The poets feign Jove turned a swan, But let them prove it if they can, As for our proof it’s not at all hard-- He was a swapping, swapping Mallard. _Chorus, etc._ “Then let us drink and dance a Galliard Unto the memory of the Mallard, And as the Mallard dives in pool, Let’s dabble, duck, and dive in bowl.” _Chorus, etc._ So for three hundred years, if not for four, has Lord Mallard annually chanted. But the last time that we have proof of a procession having gone round the College with torches, pursuing the mock search for the bird, is in 1801, when Bishop Heber, then a scholar of Brazenose, mentions in a letter home that he had witnessed the scene from his windows across the Radcliffe Square.