The Feather Thief

And Now for Something Completely Different

My friend Sav Madigan is an amazing singer/songwriter. She sends song prompt postcards out to her patrons every month. This month, she sent me one about a dude named Edwin Rist. He is most known for stealing thousands of priceless feathers and bird skins from England's Tring Natural History Museum. Many of the feathers were from extinct species and collected by contemporaries of Charles Darwin. He stole them to tie authentic Victorian Salmon Flies and to sell the rest on the seedy fly-tying community black market. Yes. That’s a thing. LOL. The prompt was to write a song from Edwin’s perspective…. Trying to understand his motivation and feelings after being caught and tried for his crimes. A wonderful book called The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson chronicles Edwin’s history, crime, and capture. It turns out he never did jail time because of an obscure legal precedent connected to Asperger’s (a diagnosis he received from the comedian Sascha Baron-Cohen’s—yes, Borat and Ali G himself—cousin, who is apparently a world-renowned neuropsychologist. Edwin is a concert flautist (he was studying at The Royal Academy of Music at the time of the theft). A few years ago, he posted videos under Heavy Metal Flute on YouTube, including a cover of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.” You can’t make this stuff up.

To write the song, I imagined Edwin introducing himself in a "Feather Thieves Anonymous" meeting. His testimony starts with a hum of regret, but his lack of remorse (a characteristic well-chronicled in the book) takes over. He's Edwin Rist, the feather thief. Why should he have any regrets when he did nothing wrong? Here’s the lyrics I came up with.

THE FEATHER THIEF

[Verse 1]

Iridescent feathers
Every one a priceless treasure
All stored in boxes and in Ziplock plastic bags
I was fueled by my obsession
So I abandoned all discretion
And I stole them just to pacify my greedz

My name is Edwin, I'm the feather thief

[Verse 2]

A symphony of hues
Every feather, held the clues
To countless stories that were waiting to be told
I decided that their history
Should forever stay a mystery
So that I could tie victorian salmon flies
My name is Edwin, I'm the feather thief

[Chorus]

Stealing feathers was a dangerous game
Was it worth my reputation?
Was it worth all the shame?
It made my name famous, and earned me a golden flute
Do I have a guilty conscious?
No. Wouldn't that be cute?

My name is Edwin, and I'm the feather thief

[Verse 3]

Not punished for my crime
Never served any time
Exonerated on a technicality
My name was once adored
And now it’s violently abhorred
I’ve been cast away from my community
|My name is Edwin, I'm the feather thief

[Verse 4]

No reason to lament
Got no regrets. I won't repent
Don't think that what I did was all that bad
I'd rather blame the scientists
Who soiled the name of Edwin Rist
Cause’ those feathers were all mine to be had

My name is Edwin, I'm the feather thief

[Chorus]

Stealing feathers was a dangerous game
Was it worth my reputation?
Was it worth all the shame?
It made my name famous, and earned me a golden flute
Do I have a guilty conscious?
No. Wouldn't that be cute?

My name is Edwin, and I'm the feather thief

Thanks for reading. Maybe I’ll record this song and post it soon!