A bizarre Oxford tradition: The Lord Mallard procession

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A bizarre tradition involving a dead duck celebrated only once every 100 years is marked this weekend at an Oxford college.

On Sunday evening, Fellows of All Souls' will hunt for their mallard, who went missing almost 600 years ago.

According to the tradition, at the beginning of each century a Fellow of All Souls' known as Lord Mallard leads a procession through the college brandishing a duck on a stick.

This year, classics don Dr Martin West has been selected to be Lord Mallard. Judy Winchester, the college bursar's secretary, said it was planned to use a wooden replica mallard during this century's procession.

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https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/662450...-just-quackers/

The Mallard Song

What Wiki knows:

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The Mallard Song is an ancient tradition of All Souls' College, Oxford. Every year it is sung at the Bursar's Dinner in March and the college's Gaudy in November. But it is also sung once a century, in a special ceremony.
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And:

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In the ceremony, Fellows parade around the College with flaming torches, led by a "Lord Mallard" who is carried in a chair, in search of a giant mallard that supposedly flew out of the foundations of the college when it was being built in 1437. The procession is led by an individual carrying a duck — originally dead, now just wooden — tied to the end of a vertical pole. The ceremony was last held in 2001, with Martin Litchfield West acting as Lord Mallard. His predecessor as Lord Mallard was Cosmo Lang, who presided over the centenary ceremony in 1901.

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More about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard_Song

That really is bizarre!

Very English!