I kid you not. Most British people believe this. Ok, maybe not ‘most,’ but I never said I was going to be fair and impartial. This story pops up again and again in the more, shall we say, ‘creative’ parts of the British media. In other words, the parts that print the first thing that comes into their heads rather than mucking around with all that tedious ‘journalism’ and ‘research’ nonsense.

According to a story in the Daily Mail hundreds of swans have gone missing from a canal outside of London. And Polish immigrants are suspected of eating them.

Polish and Lithuanian immigrants have been seen trying to drag the birds away, while the remains of some have been found butchered on the towpath…

Obviously, witnesses knew they were Poles and Lithuanians because they were probably waving Polish and Lithuanian flags, singing their national anthems, and gulping down pierogi at the time. How the hell do you catch a swan anyway? Aren’t they supposed to be able to break your arm with their beaks or something? I guess the idea is that hungry Poles hide in the bushes with knife and fork at the ready waiting for the poor birds to nod off and then jump out with a blood-curdling cry of “Smacznego!”

The whole thing is so absurd I don’t really know what to say about it. Except to point out that the stretch of the Vistula that flows through Krakow is full of swans but I’ve never been offered a swan sandwich here. I do, however, have a theory. According to another, no doubt carefully researched, story from a French news agency a Muslim man was jailed in Britain for catching and eating a swan in 2006. When arrested the man: “had blood on his shirt and white feathers in his beard…” It goes without saying that he presumably also had a towel wrapped round his head, an evil glint in his eye, and suspicious wires poking out of his shirt. So there you have it; the whole thing is clearly an al Qaeda plot to discredit decent upstanding Poles.

Want more myths? Of course you do!